Reader

i'm sure some of you may have seen the article that was written in the standard times about a proposal that was made um for regional pods um again that's something that is still ongoing um but again with a large conference in in our mayflower athletic conference in our area that has decided to move everything to fall too um those schools are off the off the board south coast conference which be the next school is a league of ten um they still don't know at this point um what they're doing as a league and or individual schools and again if we were to to get approval we would at least have four of us that would be able to move forward um and again creating game schedules is is difficult and the and the other part of that is with the mayflower athletic conference dartmouth dartmouth high school is not a great up for for those schools those are traditionally you know smaller schools that play in lower divisions um the south coast conference which again has a large and small which five large schools five small schools um in 10 and all they um they could very well decide that they want to schedule only conference games so now we would be left if we were to move to a different season this fall sports through different season we would be left with a struggle to find the opponents because our league at the southeast conference would move forward with or without us so again that's another big reason to highly consider um this proposal and the last one is reserving transportation now we again we trembly bus is our main transportation company uh new greater new bedford volk uses uh trembley new bedford high school uses trembling and again when we're all going to be required to have only a certain amount of students as student athletes and staff on a bus and we're going to need to request additional buses uh depending on you know when our reservations are and what other school schedules look like it could get very challenging for participation transportation so that's another factor that will need to be worked on okay so again at the very beginning i i shared with you some of the school-based decisions um and i highlighted what my answers are in red um can we honor the safety precautions i put with proper communication transparency responsibility buy-in absolutely yes is the best option to move false sports to fall too and put by competing in the traditional fall season we eliminate issues with scheduling follow-through and environmental concerns another thing is if the decision was to move false sports to fall too now you're in a season that will begin in february and um the challenge was would be to roll out of season uh with possible weather concerns six inches of snow on the ground and um we're fortunate to have a a turf field we're fortunate to have a large activity center but i think it would be an extreme challenge for us to pull it off never mind some of the smaller schools who have grass fields and smaller gyms but the fear of offering volleyball football unified basketball field hockey boys and girls soccer cheerleading all in the same season and again in the facilities if we were to have to start indoors that would be a scheduling nightmare and on top of it depending on what our situation is with the restrictions and the guidelines we might not be in any better in shape in february and march than we are right now now we're going to bring student athletes and teams indoors which again brings in a different element of challenge in a very restricted time to be able to get practices in so again it just it makes perfect sense to move forward and offer everything that we can in the fall season that is realistic for us and the last one who we're going to play you have your new bedford durfee bridgewater and again additional schools and schools there's certainly many conversations that are happening um to try to get commitments from schools and and again that is ongoing are we willing to to compete while following the new sport rules um we're going to adapt and to adjust uh in order to give our students the opportunity to safely participate and which with strategic planning transportation will not be an issue so again going back to our first question what is in the best interest of our students health safety and well-being physically socially and emotionally put six things in order if we were to offer off fall season and and allow our student athletes to compete in the approved sports it will promote physical social emotional well-being of students it will again engage them in physical activity it will prevent students from seeking other less healthy extracurricular outlets it engages student athletes and creates academic accountability because again they will be remote there will be a system in place that if they were not attending their remote classes they would be absent and ineligible to participate that day so that's the accountability piece it creates a sense of normalcy and the last one it promotes structure routine and balance and those are six key components as to why i feel that we need to move forward with this and i am confident that we will be able to do it safely so that is our presentation thank you sir uh fantastic presentation thank you very much yes the only the only issue and like i said this is a phenomenal format um the only thing that i think i may struggle with is is hearing questions um if they were to be asked i'll do the best i can simple easy question uh with all of this going on and you know somewhere down the line somewhere down the line we don't have watch it because i guess jonathan i can't i can't hear you okay i'm gonna he's gonna what what's the status for athlete of all seasons with all of this going on what is the status of i'm sorry what season f the athletes you know like the the three sports for 12 seasons the athletes would um the mi is allowing a four season student athlete so again if uh in a traditional season they are allowed to compete in one sport per season so three in all in this format of a four um season you know layout they would have the ability if they so chose to compete in four seasons are we are we able sometimes we've played rhode island schools is that on a table this year or is that out so mr news the the the goal the goal that that i've had from the very beginning and and i presented to 28 athletic directors in our um immediate area and presented it last week was a pod idea in which we grouped schools in pods local pods so five or six schools within a very close distance so that we would be able to common schedule with each other the leagues would be removed from um play for this year uh and again i think it would it would be a great thing moving forward unfortunately as i mentioned there are a lot of schools that have their own challenges and some of their own concerns and some have already decided to move their fall season from traditional fall to fall too which i think after presenting i think you would know i that is something that i would not recommend um because of the the challenges and so many of the unknowns i'm a firm believer that a bird in hand is better than two in the bush so if we are this and and weather-wise the fall is the best of the three seasons so if we do have the situation in which we can roll out an athletic program and offerings safely i believe that is in our best interest to do so yeah but again uh with the regional play mr news to answer your question we would not be playing rhode island schools that's good thank you one thing to remember when you get into fall two is you've got the indoor percussion and the indoor color guide that also need the gym so it's just it puts that much more pressure on absolutely and again when you when you talk about the logistics of scheduling and i and i certainly um didn't purposely leave them out i i i think anyone who has had conversations with me about that particular situation every conversation that that i've been involved with i have mentioned the space uh for color garden band that between the month of the months of mid-february um till the beginning of april i know that traditionally with competitions that is a hot time for indoor facility use i don't know what their situation is moving forward as far as what their competitions would look like but that has certainly been brought up in every single conversation that i've had concerning the the uh the issues with moving fall to fall too and um indoor scheduling okay and my last my last question at the moment is this is just approving the plan this is not saying what students can or cannot participate whether they're remote or hybrid no no that that that's that obviously that that is a conversation an issue that would be um determined um at a later date you know obviously not right now that's that's a conversation that will will involve um other individuals and it's totally separate from what i would be presenting and recommending right now thank you sir uh miss waite you want to go next sure um hi so i just have a one quick question first of all i should step back and say excellent presentation i had questions that came up and you answered jonathan i can hear her loud and clear it was great very thorough um you know i agree with no fans i think again to your point let's really focus on getting the kids you know out of the fields and playing um you know i agree with your timing i think we want to try to as you said bird in the hand let's get them out in the fall um take advantage of the good weather we don't know what's in front of us um so those sports that we can let's let's get them going um the only question i guess i had regarding transportation is you know as we kind of think about busing and i know that you know when we're actually physically bringing students back and forth to school parents are opting in some cases drive students themselves um is that going to be has that been passed around as an option for parents again i know we're not going to have fans but are they able if they choose to drive their children to competitions and that's okay um in a traditional year i would say no um because again i i i think there is so much value and importance of not only um you know being transported with your your your teammates and your peers and your coaches to and from events in the uh and and from my experience as a student athlete um those were great times and and a great piece of the experience now in this case again these nothing has been finalized but that has been brought up and discussed as to um what would constitute um or i should say what procedures that we would have in place um i can tell you that there's also been conversations about um having you know offering athletics and having it a five day a week program this this uh this season and again i'm just sharing with you some conversations that have happened that nothing has been finalized yet because again there's just so many moving parts but i just want to let all of you know that this has been extremely thought out well thought out and um we've exhausted our resources as far as you know my athletic director peers our state association the miaa and and all the guidelines that we'll have to follow so again we're we're kind of uh up out front with this um but again there are a lot of things that are in place there are some things that are not but that has definitely been a topic that has been discussed and a topic that will be considered okay well again thank you very much for you know again to your point excellent very well thought out so i appreciate it thank you you're welcome ms amaral can you hear me i don't know if you can are you able to hear me kathleen doesn't have a teacher voice like mary so jonathan's gonna have to so i i just wanna express you know my gratitude for this well thought out presentation as well um that it has been clear from day one of mr christophule joining us here in dartmouth his level of expertise and and he mentioned hitting the ground running and i have full faith based on how he hit the ground running here um with his leadership and his expertise in the plan that he's presenting my one i be like mary i've been crossing out some questions that i had along the way so you've done a really good job well thought out in what we might we might ask but one one thing that just came to mind in terms of students registering for their particular choice of sport uh might there might might it um might there be an option to sort of rank rank choice so a student instead of revisiting the pot when you realize you don't have enough for a particular event um sorry mr galicia what was that what was the question like where they ch choose their first and their second choice um so that you don't have to kind of come to the community again to say could you pick yourself well um unfortunately the way that the scheduling program i i shouldn't say scheduled program the way that the registration program um runs is students have the ability to sign up for the sport in which they're interested in now um now please know that there there are you know there are sports that have the opportunity to move forward competitively and there are some sports as i mentioned that uh are traditional fall sports that do not have the the ability to move forward and there are so my first goal is to take care of the situation in which we are going to decide which sports competitively we can move forward with once that has been determined and set up there is a second piece that we've already had multiple conversations about in which there there could be and i i want to um i don't want to you know it this could happen where the some of the traditional fall sports that are not competitive um could have the opportunity to have some type of organized team activity um there's also could be a situation in which again that organized team activity could be a strength and conditioning program very similar to the one that we were successful in running over the summer time so again my full attention has been on the sports that have been cleared to to uh to compete and once that has been determined and solved then my attention will go to step two of what we are going to be able to realistically offer the other sports that could have that opportunity mr galashaw can i can i follow up here i think what miss amaral is getting at say we don't have enough kids to feel the freshman soccer team would those students then have the option to say choose cross-country i think that's what you're getting at right yeah so so what you're asking and i'll and i'll i'll just be very upfront with the with the so if i was a uh an individual who tried out for soccer and soccer did not work out for me could i move now move to you know compete or be part of a different program now again in your traditional season in your traditional year there are things that are in place that we follow as far as our rules for but for these matters and for these cases the focus is on the students the focus is on getting them involved and getting them to safely be able to be part of something for all of the aforementioned reasons i mentioned so for those cases and for those matters it's going to be a lot more flexible than we traditionally would be because i think again the time that we're in right now it warrants it thank you but again just just to let you know like like i said i i and again i think there will be certain lines that are drawn where i'll give you an example so um so if field hockey for example if um you know they they start their season they have their their tryouts and workouts they move forward they get into game play or right on the cusp of game play that movement it would be too late but you're still talking about two and a half weeks and again i i don't want to say too late but i but it would be a lot more challenging um to justify that part of it but again i mean we we are we are we would be rolling this out um safely for our students with the um the hope that they will choose to participate for all the reasons why we stated why it was important so again we will we will be flexible uh and again with many of the situations thank you so i many of my questions were answered as we went through i had the same question as miss amaral my one of my questions is um the no attendance policy is our policy so that may mean that new bedford or brockton may have a different attendance policy is that correct or has there been any discussion of a uniform attendance policy so as as i mentioned towards the beginning of the prayer or i should say the middle um we have a meeting set up for tomorrow with within our conference and we're looking to get some consistent conference norms now i i can't guarantee that those norms would be attendance policies because again each district has the autonomy to create their attendance policies create their academic policies as far as eligibility standards so again it it would vary um so i would not be totally confident walking into that meeting and conversation knowing that i could leave and we are all of the belief that this is exactly how we're going to handle this attendance wise because again every situation every school department has their own challenges um but there is there needs to be some commonality amongst a lot of what we do since we're going to be servicing their kids and they're going to be servicing ours so again um i wouldn't be confident that i could walk out saying that we're all under the same umbrella as far as what our expectations attendance wise are um but you know we we would handle those situations and what is in the best interest of of dartmouth high school um and you know the protocols and procedures that we would uh we would have in place that we will be so i don't have any question mark questions for mr chris fully i have a sort of a statement but he doesn't have to worry about answering i mean i am personally inclined you know mr chris cooley asked the question are we willing to compete with the new rules i was a high school and college soccer player i don't really know how they're going to play soccer with these rules i read them the other day and they're like crazy but i would rather give kids the opportunity to try than to not try at all and i think you know it's on us to make sure that our kids can play and that everybody follows the rules that we do not establish a mentality of playing through right if you are sick you don't come if you quarantine you quarantine because otherwise you will ruin the season for everyone and so i think we have to be really clear in setting a message about how serious we are going to be about this because you don't want to be the person that ruins the season for everyone else that having been said yeah i think we're all definitely in favor of it if someone would like to make a motion or statement well i will in one second i mean again and i think the onus has got to be on the parents and specifically the student athletes and any student okay if they get up in the morning and they're not feeling good they can't come to school they can't come because they can't they can't be bringing possibly bringing anything here i mean that goes for anyone type of type of deal that's my two cents and with that madam chair i will make a motion that we approved the uh school committee presentation for uh uh school year 2021 for athletics as presented by mr christophuli i second that all right so i have a motion by mr nunes a second by miss amaral any further discussion i will just add one thing job andrew thank you to mr nunes comment i would say thank you at the university level we have learned that relying on behavior of children without fully developed brains is not the easiest thing to do so i really want to put the onus on parents right this is in the community this is on us we have to model this for our kids and we have to be sure that we are sending the right message to our kids right because 15 year olds i have 16 17 year olds in the house they don't always make the best decision so we've got to help them make those right decisions that have been said um all in favor aye aye opposed that carries unanimously thank you mr christophule um we look forward to moving forward with our sports season and we thank you for your presentation let us know what else we can do thank you thank you folks and as i mentioned it's it's it's been um it's been quite a process to get to this point and it continues to evolve and but please know that um i'm greatly appreciative of your support for our students and student athletes in our programs um and we will do everything within our power to make sure that this runs as smooth as it possibly can thank you thanks andrew so with that we'll move on to which is usually like one of my favorite times of the year the introduction of new hires we get to meet all the new teachers we get free food snacks right you know this is all the vera is usually here to introduce everyone so coven ruins something else i guess but we are going to learn about our new teachers yes at least a little bit even if they can't be here so i'm excited to um to hear more about them is dr gifford you're going to take over yes thank you so we are we are going to um we actually had a presentation as part of the convocation yesterday um mrs oliveira talked about our our new hires so we're gonna just replay that tonight so we're pretending she's here but i do want to mention that in addition to the folks here you already know that we have three new administrators i'll just re-mention them if you will director of music ian flint because they're not up in here mark hayes at the middle school was was one of our teachers and he is now one of the assistant principals and of course dr justine dale who you met via virtual as the new elementary the early childhood director so they're not in here but these are the folks that mrs oliveira has now started working with in project time so if we're ready to go mr galashaw let's do it good morning everyone welcome back to a exciting school year one of my favorite things to do here at project at batman public schools is project time we have a wonderful group of new folks together um every year at project time i think i say the same thing but this year was truly meaningful i've never felt so old uh working with all the new teachers all the new young teachers but we had a great two days together um what i call dhammatizing them getting them ready to go out into the trenches um the mentors then took it over from there but i gonna bring you to this quote where we really talk about what what we need to do and i hope that all of our new teachers can know that they're making a difference in their lives along with everyone else um this year we had a little bit of a i just can't figure out how to move this one so when you see someone walking around the building with a new button today today welcome them socially distant say hi i don't know how folks are going to learn people's names when we're all wearing masks but they'll get it we need name tags with our mask but welcome everyone it's my pleasure to introduce our new folks this year starting with casey allaire she's a third grade teacher at quinn elementary school and mrs jeanine tavaz is her mentor eric bosworth is at dartmouth high school as a new computer science teacher and mr doug smith is his mentor jacqueline bryant is a grade 3 teacher at quinn elementary school and janine tavaz is going to be her mentor also ellie cassand casana is a grade one teacher at quinn elementary school and michelle giosa is her mentor carrero is not new to us but she's here in a new position she will be a special education teacher at quinn elementary school and lindsay vaffides will be her mentor rebecca conden a graduate of dartmouth public schools is coming back as a kindergarten teacher at potter elementary school with mrs dana ducette as her mentor craig dutra is a grade 5 teacher at potter school with darren florence has his mentor marissa hill a math teacher and computer science teacher at dartmouth high school with mrs patricia fretcher being her mentor caitlin coker also not new to dartmouth public schools but in a brand new position will be our grade seven special education teacher with mrs lisa cat turgeon as her mentor mary clean a grade six math and science teacher at dartmouth high school with mrs ann brown as her mentor and we welcome desiree meadow a grade five special education teacher at quinn elementary school with mrs seren salvador as her mentor stephanie montero will be at grade eight math teacher at dartmouth middle school with lisa keem being her mentor julie newman is our new math teacher at dartmouth high school with mrs deb august as her mentor kylie thatcher is a grade four teacher at de melo elementary school with mrs jennifer clune being her mentor we welcome everyone we're happy to have them on board say hello to them and let's make it a great year that's it our new bees they're all babies well i don't know if any of them are watching us but normally we get to say welcome to them and you know say how glad we are to have them on board we are glad to have them on board um and you know somewhere down the line when this all breaks we'll get to have an evening yeah maybe we'll have a double meeting next year with your coaches you know before the year is out we'll have a chance to to meet them all before can you imagine though being you know not only new to a district but perhaps new to teaching in general to start like this yeah i can't even anyway it is it is what it is it is what it is all right so our next item on the agenda is the superintendent update on the start of school sure thank you so we have a few things uh we wanted to update you on obviously we had opening day for our teachers and this was day two and um all of us visiting the schools folks were busy they had they were involved in their professional development which i think i sent you the s'mores with the various uh things that they were involved in but you know we really wanted these yes these 10 days not only with the health and safety protocols that they've mandated training that they'll be involved in but also of course a lot of work with their colleagues to be able to get their room set to really figure out what they're doing for when the kids come back making sure the rooms are set up for them and various technology sessions etc so you can look at that in in that s'mores that mrs oliveira created and all the professional development that's in but again in general all of us visiting the schools people were positive they were i think a lot were very excited to be back we have also been working a lot on the virtual we're calling learning academies for the various levels so as i mentioned to you previously we were working on creating our own virtual learning academy for our elementary level uh that just made more sense for us so we have um i think we welcomed three today new teachers because we posted three was it three came in today i believe um we are going to be using the quinn elementary school the giant um music room there are two office spaces off of it so we can fit six teachers in that space uh we'll be securing some furniture as well as some kind of uh partition if you will and again it's going to be completely virtual for those students that are choosing not to return at all and we are posting for we're calling it a virtual academy coordinator if you will a teacher stipend position that will be helping mrs oliveira she'll oversee the whole thing but to have the day-to-day help with those teachers uh again a lot of new young folks that are coming in to to first time teaching positions so we'll be giving them that help as well as of course a mentor a regular grade level mentor so we're excited about it we're all anxious about it of course but we think it's going to be a good program they will have our curriculum that was one of the bonuses that we thought we would take it over ourselves but continuing the high school is continuing to work with the ingenuity platform and we are now we actually switch from ingenuity because it just was not going to work for the middle school with too much independent work we are looking and we're pretty positive i would say 99.9 that we are going to be using the techa platform for the middle school instead we've had meetings with the middle school this week with mr galashaw and um unless the whole world blew up we are in with techa so each school is reaching out to parents that expressed interest in virtual platforms so that is now being handled by the school level so people have questions about that they need to contact the schools their individual schools and their questions can be answered we also completed um the color-coded calendar we have scrutinized that because every little thing can be a mistake and it's so much intricate detail and we uh did post that up on the website today but we found one little mistake of course so we're going to pull it down we just didn't mean anything but we're hoping that helps parents so see when their their cohort of students will be attending school again not knowing if that switches in the long run or what but we're hoping that will help parents um navigate through this on this crazy time um so other than that as you know i think some of you watched it and we also have posted on our website the link to dr bromage's session and as just for folks at home that may not know he's associate professor of immunology and he's leading research programs at umass dartmouth focusing on immune responses to infectious pathogens etc we had him speak for a couple of hours last week virtually to the staff and i have to say we had tons of positive comments from people that watched it that felt much more comfortable and confident coming back to the schools as well as we got some ideas which i know mr kylie's going to talk to you about in a minute but we did post that link on the website so folks can watch that it's very important we think one of the major major points that he stressed over and over again was that the risk factor can be significantly decreased by what we're doing right now the mask wearing and the social distancing that's number one topic for folks but anyway with that for the school opening and the covet update i asked mr kylie to be part of that to really talk about more about the the uh building and the facility uh preparation so thank you dr gifford so we've had a chance in some of our school committee meetings to talk about some of this but yesterday i had the opportunity to share with staff some of the things that we've been working on to uh begin this this new phase so um it's an exciting transition after five and a half months of planning and hoping that we were going to come back and then not getting back and now finally getting back so um we've spent this time as you know receiving guidance preparing getting revised guidance adjusting our preparations getting more guidance adjusting again it's been really you know a unique complex time for us to deal with but i guess before i get into the details i i think that i'd be remiss if i didn't thank rick ferreira and his maintenance staff as well as the building administrators and their support staff and custodians who really have stepped it up and and made this possible it's i certainly wouldn't be here today in this position without um incredible efforts on their parts so yeah we began the process in march of course uh hoping that we were gonna have a quick return and cleaning the buildings disinfecting the buildings obviously we were very disappointed that that never happened but we continued our efforts from then until now hvac maintenance has been an area of focus cleaning filter changes adjusting system settings to increase fresh air exchange that's been one of the things that we've been talking to dr bromage about window maintenance and installation in some cases we were mr ferreira came up with some great ideas for installing windows in spots that actually weren't opening weren't functioning open windows in the past so we did that adjusting working with our custodial staff to adjust their hours so that they will have time during the day to focus on high touch surface areas and cleaning those focusing on providing epa list and sars cove ii approved chemicals that can kill covet 19 as disinfectants for us purchasing items to make to apply those like electrostatic sprayers and simple cans of spray and lots of different you know techniques in order to make sure that the buildings are disinfected uh after you know some confusion with before the state came out with its official guidance on physical distancing once we finally realized that their sort of wishy-washy language wasn't going to work for us and we focused on six feet we worked to configure classroom spaces in other spaces to alter them in ways so that we could provide physical distancing we leased storage spaces for lots of furniture and are still leasing i just signed a new one this morning for another unit at the middle school because we're filling these things up it's amazing how much stuff you pack into a classroom when you're not worried about how much stuff you have in a classroom so that's an ongoing thing that we'll be you know continuing over the next couple of weeks as we prepare for students um we are purchasing uh mrs oliveira has been working to purchase individual student supplies so that we can limit the sharing of items we have created with the help of the administrators in the buildings protocols including traffic patterns signage so that we can help kids understand where they need to be and where they shouldn't be and how to move about the buildings we're continuing to you know continuing to apply all those signs to areas floors walls frantically moving on those that's where i was this morning at eight o'clock i was at the mellow where they were laying down lines in the middle of floors our maintenance crew and getting ready to put signage up in that school we created isolation spaces for symptomatic students we focused on hygiene we have hand sanitizer readily available we have more than four tons of hand sanitizer available right now in the buildings so that's not going to be a problem we can keep our hands clean we have a great volume of masks for folks to keep them safe if they do if they choose not to bring their own mask most people by the way so far our staff the vast majority of staff have brought their own masks so we've really only distributed a few masks for all the staff over the last couple of days but they are available and each office has masks available for folks we have provided we have purchased specialized ppe like gloves gowns safety glasses face shields clear masks for staff that for whom it's recommended so staff that are working closely with kids we have purchased those items we have desk shields also available so like plexiglas desk shields we have a couple of models already in-house we're going to have some more two more different ones um that i've been working on ordering today so we'll have lots of options for those folks who do have to work within the six feet recommended physical distance of kids there is a variety of ways to to protect themselves and obviously good hygiene proper ppe are the main components of that so those are some of the things that you know we have in place to to help the staff and i think that um it's something that as now staff are returning we've had a lot of administrative discussions about how this would work and now we finally have a big larger more collaborative group in place and we have some time here to get it all organized and understand okay who's going to need what to do to provide um you know a high level of service to kids so we're working with them now to do that so that's it's an exciting uh different sort of time i just want to add one more thing and then of course we can take questions but just as far as staffing as well as you know there are various leaves that folks can choose to take at this point we have 10 staff members tas as well as teachers that have put in for some sort of a leave but um those are all based on child care and some of them are just intermittent so we've allowed that um where they might say my child my my wife is working you know whatever days i need to be out tuesdays and thursdays so some of them are not the entire time or the entire week so this week we'll be now that we kind of had that organized we'll be meeting and looking at that and deciding how to help the principals cover those people um we've also had of course some retirements since all of this happened with tas et cetera so this week we're working on that to see exactly where we are with those folks and what we need to um add to the staffing or how we're going to cover those positions um i have to say with you know mr kiley of course he's been working really hard on the grants that we have been given but if people think this is cheap it's not um just to try we are basically trying to develop three education systems and shift our entire education system in in a couple of months that's been 350 years in existence and like the virtual platform again we had to hire this six additional teachers which is going to be through our grants their one-year positions but we have to be honest we're having a very hard time with our special education uh department to try to cover when when students are choosing for example virtual we only have so many teachers and they only have so many hours in the day and they're responsible for classrooms of kids so we have to be honest that's a big issue and and significant problem and we're going to be working on that really hard this we have meetings this week to now focus on that issue um so again if people think this is not this is just like the schools are closed because i've seen those comments before we're not closed and we're still teaching and we have i would say double the work um to try to meet the needs of our kids in various platforms um so that's what i and and i know we'll be meeting with town hall and and working through them and letting folks know the the work we're trying to do to meet the needs of all our kids so that's all i have for tonight uh why don't we go down miss wait go ahead um michelle deferred no go ahead go um you know first of all again like thank you for everything that you know your staff have done it's you know wow it's been it's been a journey um i think if i have anything as mr noon says living the dream [Laughter] you should have won that shirt tonight yeah do you want me to come back to you miss wait well i just have one quick question i guess about the the virtual learning academy has there been any you know as we're hiring those six teachers how will that work you know normally if you're they would have their you know special areas that they would go to so and i know there was some lack of certainty there has has that been kind of determined a little bit further or how that will be adjusted yeah we we put that right up front because because of the personnel issues and the scheduling we are not promising that the kids get that we are going to uh for example we were talking today that um i know miss roy is working on the specialist schedule and if folks have gaps in their um schedules we were just talking today they might be able to at least record some lessons like let's say it's an art lesson or something so but yeah we we just don't have the personnel right right to be honest okay and that's what i assumed and then just you know kind of you know i had you know some parents ask you know and about let's say you know they're anticipating they're hoping to stay in the remote is there any way that let's say something changes within the family that someone can jump back into the remote we go into hybrid they want to jump onto that remote i know we're trying to get everyone that wants to do that ideally making that decision now is there still that possibility let's say like october you know their health someone in their family's health changes can they make that jump at that point from like our remote system that we're like on to like our so let's say we are jumping onto hybrid can you jump into either ingenuity um you know the the middle school platform or our elementary platform is that something they can do at that point i know we want to get those folks you know started in the fall as you know right now but is that an option we again we talked again today but as far as like the element we see them a little bit differently because the elementary is basically we're saying there are teachers now there are it's our curriculum so there would be actually no need either way but what we want to be able to do is approach each situation on an individual basis because as you as you know especially if we're in hybrid and we've already let's say all our classrooms are full with the six foot capacity and we just can't shift them you know but but we will be able to approach each one on an individual basis i hope there aren't many but yeah but we are especially with the edge annuity platform i know the high school is hoping to get kids started right away because it's just that continuum of curriculum to make it and they could change at um as we said at semester break so that the grading period is over and shift in so there are there are nuances to the to the the situations yeah but i think that's uh you know i'm sure i'll have other questions later yeah i think that's you know we've done so much work and again and we i'm very grateful yeah thank you thank you mr news thank you madam chair um a couple of things a couple of general comments uh first and foremost and i agree with my colleague my hat's off to everybody for yeoman's work that's been done this summer uh i appreciate all the you know email updates and everything else as to to what's been going on and such um i did manage to catch uh part of the q a that you had on thursday with and that was excellent i thought it was you know well done type of deal and i did catch most of uh dr bremen's uh discussion on friday fantastic i mean he he laid it all out there and he had he had the answers to any and all questions and situations so i mean personally i appreciate his time without you know with the district giving us you know that that that information the only question i have in you know thinking about this type of deal more so for mr kylie i would think uh somewhere down the line all of a sudden everything clears and governor baker january 4th says okay we're good you guys can go back to full participation in school you know no six foot no guidelines have a nice day yeah probably not but that's wishful thinking but honestly in all serious how long is it going to how long would it take us to to basically get our classrooms back set i mean i know we've got all the storage containers on site and that type of deal but to reconfigure everything i guess is yeah we would be so excited that i'm sure we'd work all night i think it would take us several days and i think we'd likely have to have some sort of break in order to do it and but not to say that it couldn't incorporate a weekend but a weekend alone i don't think would be enough to actually reconfigure everything so we would probably require you know possibly two days of okay let's reset and then uh and plus the weekend time in order to be able to get everything back and set up yeah almost per se for argumentation take two snow days plus the weekend just i think that is a possibility yeah to get everything okay i was just you know i do my best it's a lot to do there's no doubt about it i mean i've seen what the classrooms look like and what they were before so yeah that's all i have madam chair thank you mrs yes um i'll start off with uh the calendar that was great uh you mentioned the the the error in there and and all of that but i didn't look and i'm just wondering um i've seen people post and i can understand the confusion they there have been comments i've seen although i've taken myself off of most social media platforms and it's been a breath of fresh air however uh i have seen some folks kind of snarky comments but understandable confusion around yeah that's really how can you figure that out and well you can if you take it step by step but i get it it's overwhelming for many um including myself you can see my notes it's a hot mess but i'm wondering if the calendar will be translated into our district's electronic calendar so that then a parent who would have chosen say notifications for dimelo or quinn or potter or the high school that they then could then choose for the time being cohort a dartmouth high school cohort b potter so that they could kind of extract that more easily for their families would that be something that we could look into doing on the district calendar like on the district calendar october 3rd it's coordinated right that's what you mean but that could yeah i mean it'd be a lot of work but i'm just thinking that might be something that i don't do that so i don't know and to me i don't do that so yeah sure why not yes of course someone can handle that you have to work with mr gala short see if there was a fast you know yeah there might be yeah if there is i think it might be helpful for a family to kind of translate that that information easily and if we could anything we could do to ease that but again only you know if it's possible print that and put it on my refrigerator yeah oh and the refrigerator and the car make it a magnet everywhere i go absolutely um i printed it in black and white so it's not doing me any good right now because they don't have color yeah right right what was that oh he's got it he has it in color so that's um so okay so that's just a suggestion if we can um let me see and of course i'm you know me i'm i'm like the ppe police over here and i just want to bring it back to we talked about miss andrew christopher and we brought like hit the ground running do we have our ppe where it needs to be for the people to access it right now even teachers even though they haven't necessarily needed it students aren't in and they're bringing their own masks but are those things like right hit the ground running in classrooms right now yeah okay no but they will be before there's kids here absolutely um but what we do have is so ppe for staff for doing what they're doing right now is available for them so masks and they're not working closely with with students right now so they don't you know need any of that additional equipment but we do have it all and we will distribute it all we are still configuring some things believe it or not we're still moving furniture um so we really don't want to do that until we're set um but we do have okay and i'm fine before students arrive yeah and in my this just came to me and you may have gone over this but is the ppe going to exist um in the classrooms or just say like in the nurses i i would hope not but i mean are they gonna is it gonna be everywhere i think it depends on what the ppe is being used for um but yes i i would expect that a supply would be nearby whoever needs to use it so um if particular staff members in a classroom sometimes need gowns or gloves or shields then it should be in the classroom it doesn't they shouldn't have to go and get it somewhere if they're regularly using it okay um one other one concern of mine uh that i've run into um so a family member of mine requires some personal equipment personal care equipment that gets delivered monthly and um part of that uh equipment is gloves and um the gloves haven't been coming with the other personal care products so um you know me i keep like i we have enough ppe and i trust you i you've done a phenomenal job i just i just know the reality of what happens that ppe and i just worry i i if we have three months six months i just ask that we keep ordering it and get to to eight months so that we know maybe in four months we need more i'm i'm highly worried about that um just because i i'm thinking of course of of familiar situations and um and those kids who just might not be able to kind of reset themselves and get a little frustrated and i'm thinking of bodily fluids and just frustration maybe spitting and some younger kids and touching and sticky and everything else i could list a million things that you might not already have in your you probably already have a list but but if at all possible if we keep ordering um it's just a concern of mine because it's so necessary uh and um anyway that's my little pp i agree yeah it's a concern of mine too i mean it it honestly is what i wake up in the middle of the night thinking about so um at 4 00 a.m when i but the first thought in my head is something about some ppe thing yeah that has been happening a lot i hate to say so um but yes no i i totally agree and um we have we have quantities in stock that i know we are fine for a couple of months and then um we we also need to learn to uh to understand how much we need absolutely you know and um this is a whole new a whole new adventure so and that's another worry i you know the over usage potentially not just of the students just of the over the over caution of staff that over time will get more familiar with their ability sort of understand when they need to do that versus hyper vigilant i guess yeah that's a whole other element um let's see i'm sorry of course you know the the special education piece i don't know where i wrote it but i'll just go off the coffee you know in normal times it is not uncommon for um for districts not just our district to secure staff for those related services speech therapists occupational therapists i mean that's rampantly under staffed in districts and oftentimes districts have to contract out to have those services so it's it's understandable but deeply concerning just knowing that many students haven't been able to access since march anything on a regular basis and while i'm i'm very optimistic for my own personal situation i can understand parents being quite concerned about the regression and i know there'll be more to come on that and i try to not alarm parents and let them know those things there there's guidance for that too but uh however we can i don't know if every every herculean effort we can make to to to make sure that those positions are are somehow filled um and to that note i don't know if this is possible and i'm just thinking of this so it might not even make sense but um i wonder if in by chance some of our partner collaboratives potentially if there could be some not changes to the iep but in this this time this pandemic time i wonder if it's possible that we sort of reach out to those folks or create some kind of agreement and and some of those services might be able to be facilitated you know not the placements change for these students but i don't know if that's even possible i uh but right all i can say right now is it's um high on our priority list as well we share your concern and um are not shying away from trying to solve the problem it's just right now we haven't solved it no so and it's not just us right we are uh in in very good company with this horrible problem so i i really thank everyone mr kylie i everyone thank you so much and that's all i have thanks so i will maybe take the middle path between miss amaral and mr nunes i'm not super optimistic but i will also say that i am concerned that we don't want to over order ppe because the last thing we want to have is four tons of hand sanitizer that go bad because i have hand sanitizer that goes bad so i mean given that money is tight i do think it is definitely a balance and that we need to learn and we don't want to necessarily order eight months because if we only need five months then we've got a lot of stuff that we pay for um so i just want to get some clarity i know parents have been asking about this um can we i know we're still sort of working on what the remote options are but can we sort of clearly publish those options for parents direct them because people are asking when do i have to make my decision by and i know they you know they did the survey and you're saying so i want to be clear they should finalize their decision with the principle of their building that's right do we have a date by which they need to do that because parents have been asking this like when do because we haven't also finalized what remote learning looks like so i'm just i think there's a lot of confusion about when do i have to make the decision and i want to know what i'm making a decision about so yeah i don't i know you can't give me an answer right now but if we could publish that that say this is what it looks like this is who you contact and this is the date you need to contact people by i think that would help a lot of parents in terms of clarity yeah we can do that and like i said um it really evolved a little bit more but this week we came to a i think a real clear place so great and i just think it just needs to be communicated a deadline set and a procedure for that it just needs to be set so parents know um to miss amarillo's points about the ab um from the high school and middle school perspective i think this is also going to get really tricky because not only do you have the ab cohort you have like day abcdef which i could never keep track of either so i don't know do we have to merge it with a calendar but even if we could be something so like sort of low-ish tech is to create like a twitter handle or a facebook post to p like the middle school school day right and it's like cohort a day e right because i think a lot of us have confusion about what day it is in those schools not just cohort a and b but now that we're adding cohort a and b with the days where the periods roll i think it would just be really helpful if there is a place that everyone can go and it doesn't we can low-tech it right we don't have to integrate it with our calendar it can be a facebook or twitter or something like that where people just know okay i get up i check that that's how i find out which class i show up to this morning at you know in the morning yep um the other thing that i had was um do we have plans for getting materials to kids um some of the classes like you know maybe you need math manipulates for lower levels i know my son is taking robotics with mr brodsky and i'm pretty sure he's probably going to need something to do that right so what is our plan do we have a plan for those classes where kids need stuff that they're going to have to work on at home either for remote or the hybrid to get that stuff to them that's what i asked last meeting yeah i know that each school is working on like i know a letter is going out from the elementary this friday those kinds of things so again a lot of that is coming from the schools i know they did some co cohort i've got cohort in the brain um chromebook dissemination today you know those kinds of things so it's little by little but um there's also going to be book bags at the elementary um but just to get back to what you asked so a lot is coming from the schools but just to get back to what you asked about the um signing up for the virtual one thing that did go out was an email to parents that did initially say they were interested so they have that information so we will we'll continue to post more updates up just what you're saying but you should have received if you're still uh if you didn't say you were interested contact the school et cetera et cetera so those are good points yeah that would be great and i think i think the other thing related to not just you know textbooks and then the specialized materials is parents really want to know like what do they need to buy um we are running into we start classes on campus on on wednesday we're running into supply chain issues so like a lot of our books and lab materials students are like uh i can't get my book for three weeks because just the supply chain is so disrupted so the sooner we can let parents know what they need to get the better because i am worried about hopefully there won't be too much specialized stuff and i know i have like folders and this and that all over the house here and there that i could reuse um but getting that to parents and letting them know i think would be really useful yeah i know that's coming out from the teachers as well but okay i guess we're just a little slow this year no we are but i i just know i think i think everyone is anxious right yeah yeah it's really a couple weeks before school is starting and of course people kind of want to know what they're what they're gonna need to get yeah so very good yeah other questions mary yeah actually if i could jump back in um you know i don't know if this dovetails exactly with this conversation but as we're kind of talking about like you know parents and readiness for the you know with their children in the mornings i know i had reached out to mr kylie and i brought this up before and i came up with you know several parents that i know the possibility of parents doing a checklist just even something that could be on their phone akin to what you do when you go to a pediatrician's office in the morning and just just every morning seeing like as a you know step to say like does your child have any of these you know you've already registered that child you know check off like which one of these this might be more from mr galesha but you know something that could then go on to like they have an aspen you know there's a red flag you know if something comes up it should be you know it happens at every medical appointment that i've gone to you know where i get like you just you have it there so it shows up the nurse can you know access it you know if she has a concern she can see you know it doesn't have to be something bus driver it's not you know not a ticket but just something that the parent actually is going through a checklist in the morning you know on their phone bing bing bing no no no no no send johnny off to school you know or oh wait you know johnny did have a fever last night and that would be a red flag so and again it can be wiped at the end of every week or you know something like that but i think it would just be helpful for parents just to have that and again we kind of talk about parents the accountability when it comes to sports as well i just think like that just to have that process one more thing at home um as a reminder if that's something that we can accomplish you know i think it would be helpful so we have that on campus and the problem is once you fill it out five times you're like yep yep you stop reading it after about you know day five because the questions never change um so i don't i don't disagree like having a checklist for people to refer to but requiring them to fill it out every day i don't i don't know i haven't seen the research on that whether it actually changes behavior or whether people just start you know i mean who reads a user agreement anymore right you just scroll on down and click the check um and that we found that happening sort of in our campuses and on campuses that people aren't reading those mr nunes yeah and i'm just wondering what you're saying are you talking about that checklist then gets sent to the school or that's that just stays with the parents of the school because i mean my only concern now becomes is now we start overloading the schools with you know you get a thousand here a thousand in the middle school three hundred and four hundred dollars almost go into like their aspen account you know something like that that would kind of go just you know float in and then just you know it would only come up if there was like a red line you know something that you know that was a red flag all right i'm just wondering if we're just again putting too much overload and emphasis we're taking responsibility off the parent and student and pushing it on to administration and staff okay that's my two cents no disrespect no it's okay i mean i i do think it might be good for parents i think we have a list of if you have those things don't send your kids to school but i don't know that we need to make it that you have to fill it out every day because then also imagine you've got five kids and you've got to fill out one of those like i would probably be ready that like every morning having to fill out ten questions for five kids can be a lot too right yeah so i'm just not sure if it's i'm just not sure if it's an extra burden that doesn't provide us with additional enough additional information i don't know i i mean yeah you're looking into it would go crazy right well it's a lot for parents to do and it's a lot for right for people to manage in terms of data and i'm not sure there's probably research on whether or not it changes people's behavior that we can maybe look at other questions or comments all right well thank you for all of your hard work it's been a lot of work i know there's still a lot we're doing the same thing we're starting classes tomorrow and there's like 50 000 questions that we still haven't answered um you know you're building the plane as you fly so right um that's right we have a little extra time with starting remote thank goodness thank goodness um i don't have any i don't think you have any other updates i don't have any report does anybody have anything else that they would like to add or share with us at this point in time do we have i'm my calendars aren't talking to each other do we have our next meeting yes september 14th at 6 30.

i'll turn it over to jorge thank you um the update i have on kobe is uh the district negotiations team has reached an agreement with uh the aea and afe bargaining units um you actually are going to be taking action on the aaa mou and we're currently working towards reaching an mou with our csca bargaining unit partners additionally the hr office continues to provide employees with related information with regarding leaves specifically new legislation that came from the federal government entitled h.r 6201 on the corona and the family's first coronavirus release act uh it's also noteworthy to mention that the district has launched a clova 19 screening tool for employees to complete prior to beginning their shift and that's something that we are continuing to to provide every morning and we've even received input and as changes happen we've modified that to reflect the changes and then there was alluded to earlier in the comments with regards to the work involved with staffing virtual academy and a lot of work has taken place there and work will continue to be dedicated to virtual academy and and i really want to applaud all the different stakeholders that participated in that process thank you okay um hello good evening my update um so i have a couple of updates um last spring we uh when we first went into school closure we had a process where we were distributing chromebooks and at the end of uh the school year um it was 5156 chromebooks that were distributed to uh students over the summer we continued to distribute chromebooks we had students who are participating in um summer program in think together and so we continued to do that and we would do it one or two times a week depending on the calls that came in as as we began to get closer to school just a few days really before school opened we saw quite a heavy volume uh in in calls and requests for for chromebooks so we changed the process uh we had had a process where we were taking appointments and uh we had walk ups and uh it was a it was a it was a great process but because of the demand um we really needed to change what we were doing so we actually shifted uh to a drive-through process and so um we uh we did that and we were able to uh distribute um another 1 353.

everybody in our public to tonight's meeting if you all would stand let's have the pledge to allegiance please i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you annie are you able to hear us okay yeah yeah okay perfect so next on our agenda is the adoption of our agenda item number four if someone would make a motion to adopt tonight's agenda there are two changes do we need to go over that in the adoption just one change on the on the agenda and then one on a motion okay okay well i'll make um what is the change the change is for item 11a that's right thank you 11 a says suspension to policy bgb for the period of time the board addresses and that should be item 11b so there should be a roman numeral one after the after the roman numeral can say it one more time it's um suspension of policy bgb for the period of time the board addresses 11 b is what it should be instead of 10b you like to make that motion sure yes i moved to adopt the agenda as presented with thanks with a change of item 10b [Music] 11b all right all in favor aye any are you in favor of adoption perfect yeah call it the public is next all right thank you moving on item number six our information and discussion first up is our superintendent's report all right i have uh three items that are not on the memo but that i want to add one is today i accepted a check from sparklight and they donated 1100 to the district we were one of seven districts in their prescott region that was awarded um the money from their their um philanthropic philanthropy um through the through sparklight and that just went into the district account and we're kind of trying to decide what exactly we're going to use it for it didn't have any purpose um from a spark light so we could use it for whatever we wanted and so we accepted that um that should be on i've already written a thank you note to them that should go in the mail tomorrow and uh it should go also on facebook and then we sent the pictures to sparklight so hopefully it'll be on their promotion however they want to promote that but we truly appreciate them and thank them for being a community partner to the district um the next bit of news is that the governing board election which was to happen in november if we had enough candidates is going to be canceled tomorrow and as i mentioned before annie mortensen and mike fogle are two candidates that filled out the paperwork that i did the petitions and everything we have one more candidate that filed as a writing candidate and no one else filed for a writing candidate so he is in automatically and that would be peter tona so peter is going to be the third person to fill the third seat that's available and there won't need to be an election to do that and he will serve a four-year term by doing that and that's something that is done through the county schools office and so he will be seated as the third board member in january so that's exciting um peter is has a lot of experience being a board member um he is uh nothing against the members that are here but he is the one that has the most experience or regarding school budgets as far as board members go so i'm excited to have him on board and i think he's going to be a good a good addition to the governing board i also want to mention we had um it was it was nice this morning some normalcy and we celebrated our teachers and staff members of the month and that was nice you know it was i think the teachers truly appreciated we had some tears we had some lots of smiles and so it was it was exciting to get out there and honor our teachers and staff members for what they're doing and again brings a little bit of normalcy to a time that's not so normal so i wanted to recognize our teachers and staff members of the month at territorial our teacher of the month was or is shannon feipel our staff member of the month is mo guppy who works her guts out as the as the school secretary there and i'm going to mention also mike schoenfeld who served as our district employee of the month or staff member of the month he just happens to be at territorial so we got to honor him he is the district employee of the month at del rio's school we have cheryl st charles we also is the teacher of the month our staff member of the month is april morgan at heritage middle school our staff our teacher of the month is pearl turley and our staff member of the month is don varela and at the high school our teacher of the month is dan eisenberg and our staff member of the month is edie holbert so we're excited every single name on here high quality person doing a fantastic job for the district doing a fantastic job for the kids at chino valley and paulden to help educate them super excited to honor them for what they're doing so i want to give a huge shout out their names will show up um hopefully in the paper it's going to be sent to the paper hopefully it'll show up and then in addition it will show up on the district facebook page so we're excited um we also what's neat was we had our new contract public information officer there so he's like lots of pictures he'll be writing things up sending things out so we'll make sure that we get that information out to honor those people a um and this going to the memorandum we do have a covet 19 update the metrics are in the moderate risk range for two of the three benchmarks and while the third has dipped into the minimal risk range and that is the percent hospitalizations due to cobit isn't now in the minimal risk the percent positive on the pcr tests and the number of cases are still in the moderate risk range this is exactly where we need to be in order to start the hybrid instruction that is that you authorize to start next tuesday so we're excited about it we're excited to have kids on campus i think there's a lot of parents excited to have their kids on campus granted it's only two days a week for most kids but it's a start and we're still hopefully on track to start the all in person on the october 19th but we'll we'll have a board meeting and i'll update you on that between now and then um rebecca did some um submitted a grant application and i've talked a little bit about that in the bottom of the next section for what's called the enrollment stabilization grant as part of that there's a calculation that the costs associated with covid and there's other costs that we'll talk about but just the stuff that we're going to buy and the time it takes is going to cost us about 700 000 the district now we do have um we did get at 450 000 in um what's called esser money which is cares money from um it was through this state but came from the federal government we had about 150 000 from the force fees management association which was to help cover technology costs and then in addition um there is uh what's called dema which is the department of of emergency and military uh affairs and that is basically the state's version of fema and we're hoping to get some some grant money from them to help cover these costs um but that's only half the story and i'll talk about the second half of the story in just a second but that 700 thousand dollars is about half of what we expect it could cost the district um the second part is our enrollment so as of yesterday our 40th day adm projection is 2072 adm now that's not necessary students because if you remember kinders only count half preschoolers only count half things like that last year our 40th day was 2218 adm that is a decrease of 146 adm i plug that into our formula for calculating revenue and that equates to a decrease of 756 000 so that's the other half of the hit is the 756 000 hit to revenue now that's where the the enrollment stabilization grant is going to help we should be able to get most of that back hopefully through the enrollment stabilization grant which is another form of cares money that the governor has access to so uh that application was due today it was turned in yesterday rebecca worked her guts out on it did a great job on it so we're hope um hoping to find out at least some preliminary approval on what we submitted we won't know the amount until after our 40th day which is the last half of october so then any um any because how much was the grant going to be for approximately we don't know yet oh that's right we don't know yet and then if there's any other discrepancies we'd be able to make it up how well we have carry forward okay so that's that's going to help out um and things could get tight and that's the other issue okay um i think there's what about 400 thousand dollars in carryforward was that the approximate number so that's basically our buffer um that that 700 000 is some future expenses that we haven't expended yet also um things can come up that we don't know about but based on what we know that seven hundred thousand dollars is what we've expended already what we plan to spend in the future um the other thing that can happen is our 40th day can be hit hard because of what's happening to enrollment between now and the 40th day if we come back in person those kids may come back we may capture those kids and it would help us on our um final regular budget without the um the overall uh loss of um adm and so we could end up close to what we were last year it kind of depends on on what happens and and how what happens with cope cobin how people feel about sending their kids back to school and things like that so most of the 146 is at tech and particularly in kinder we are down 80 bodies in the kindergarten classroom we have about a hundred last year we're about 180.

what it is is it is an additional tax of 3.5 for people that make um it is a tax let me put this correctly it is taxed for a single person on the income that they earn over 250 000. so if a person earns 250 000 or 250 1 000 they would pay 35 in tax just on that thousand dollars over the 250.

mom good evening we are at the appointed time of six o'clock welcome to this evening's work-study session of the gilbert unified school district governing board welcome to staff dr mccord and those of you who are watching online and welcome to the board we are as indicated in a work study session item 2 2.01 is the health benchmarks and phased reopening update and i will defer to dr mccord do you need to do a roll call we don't okay just checking let me get my screen situated michael are you ready back there thank you good evening everyone governing board members all the folks here in the audience and those online uh tonight we wanted to talk about a couple things and the first part is is what we committed to and that is going over the benchmarks every time that we're together we have a new set that came out and then we'd also like to talk to you about just what we're doing as we're returning to campus on september 8th and we have an elementary principal junior high principal and a high school principal here to kind of talk about and let you know what they're doing on their campuses and it's represented what we're doing on all of our campuses and then we'll we'll also go through some things related to budget and covid as well as reviewing some of the health protocols that we'll have in place and how it relates to employees as well in terms of the training that's been done and then we'll sum it up so we'll get started again you'll see some of the same slides you've seen in weeks past and again looking at minimal moderate and substantial as it relates to cases percent positivity and covet-like illness and how we fall into those categories and this is uh provided by the arizona department of health when you're in each one of those areas whether it's green yellow or red they have specific boxes that they've checked off that you need to adhere to as you're opening up if you're opening up in some of those areas and then again as it relates to the learning styles as they relate to the level of spread green is traditional two yellow is hybrid and red is virtual with on-site support looking at these numbers are from last thursday for the week ending august 9th um if you look up on the right thus the graphs that come right off of the website looking at the first criteria which is case rate uh less than a thousand are declining we're at per 100 000 and we have met that and there's two areas within that you can meet we've actually met both you only need to meet one decline in cases or less than 100 cases per 100 000 individuals for two consecutive weeks looking at criteria two percent positivity uh the benchmark is at seven percent uh the last time he's a reporter on august second we it was at 8.6 knowing that we'd go down and it did of course to 6.1 and it's green on the chart because it's below the seven percent but it hasn't been there for two weeks but it's trending down and we expect to be there this thursday and then for the last one is hospital visits criteria three we are we've met it at 3.7 percent minimal risk if you look at the chart it's been below the 10 percent for quite a few weeks now so that's the maricopa county health benchmarks any questions on that i'll move over to gps boundaries this is again provided by maricopa county health department and they put together this dashboard that enables you to click on your boundaries to find out where you are in terms of each criteria we're at 42.11 per 100 000 for case rate we've met that area uh and it's at moderate risk criteria two seven percent positivity that's at 4.46 we again met that trending down in both areas and for criteria 3 we're at 3.0 which we met that and again it's at minimal risk and on the screen it's a little hard to see but that's been the numbers for the past two weeks i think dr mccord yes so we met this criteria number two because for two weeks in a row it's been below seven percent correct whereas for the whole county we've had one week as a couple weeks ago that we met it anticipating the second week to be met correct okay thank you you're welcome and then just side by side comparison of maricopa county as well as uh the gps boundaries again the same numbers any questions related to that all right dr mccormick yes sir this is trailing about two to two and a half weeks so that's correct the next week will be released thursday on the dashboard but again we know that much of that data is already available live perhaps not at the district level but on the county and county state level it's available on the ade or 80 adhs right website yeah and against looking and checking those numbers they are continually trending down as of the last couple weeks and the reason that they haven't transferred it to the dashboard is they recognize that in the last particularly the current week in the previous week but a little bit a little bit two weeks there's still data coming in and the numbers may change slightly correct but having watched it for the last month if we go back two weeks it's been my observation doesn't change by more than about a tenth or two tenths of a percent that's exactly what i've observed too yeah this is there's a couple things i do every morning when i get in and this is one of them right off the bat just to check see if the numbers are updated all right next we'd like to bring up principal of ashland rant well jason do you want to introduce us or you just want to bring up suzanne all right we'll bring up uh suzanne carlson she's principal of ashland ranch elementary and she's gonna talk to you about the protocols the things they put in place uh to start our hybrid model on september 8th suzanne hi good evening board members dr mccourt i'm honored to be here tonight to represent the elementary schools i i know we had a little bit of an unconventional start to the school year but i also want to share with you that i really see a shift in some excitement on our campuses as you know elementary schools teachers love what they do and the last few days you can really see that excitement in our teachers the copy machine has been going non-stop over the weekend the teachers were in putting up bulletin boards they're making their student name tags checking those class lists multiple times to make sure that they're really prepared for our students next week and at ashland we're allowing parents to come in and bring student supplies and there's wagons in the front offices and so we've had those opportunities the last few days to really interact with parents and students and and we're hearing those positive messages and that excitement as it builds for school next week and so there's a lot of really good things going on not just as at ashland but across the district many schools are welcoming kindergarten families and new families in this week as we prepare to start school and so i'm going to share a few of the things that we've done at ashland and many of these things are happening around the district to make sure that teachers and are in a place next week to teach and our students in our place to learn and i think that's our goal for everyone and so as you can see from the powerpoint up here are there are directional marker markings and signage throughout the campus and so when you come onto a campus you'll see the face mask signs as well as a variety of other signage to help students and parents know exactly what to expect so that they feel safe a procedure that we implemented this year is rather than going to the playground when they arrive they're going to go directly to their classroom and so those little dots that you see here in this picture are just some guiding points to help students find their way in that hallway picture there you can see some stripes and some arrows that will just help serve as another guiding point so that students stay to the right or to the left to hopefully keep some of that congestion down for those those wider areas in the school buildings the sanitation that's there are in all main traffic areas in the school we happen to have 12 at ashland i know at other elementary schools they've built some portable sanitizing stations so they can take them onto the playground area and into the cafeteria and so the principals have done a really nice job of ensuring that sanitize sanitation or the pumps are available for kids to use at all you know main entry points and then our custodians i can't say enough about the custodial staff they've been working since march to really care for our staff and our students they're cleaning key touch points around the school they're cleaning bathrooms regularly and and they've been trained by albert to really make sure that they know what needs to be done on the campuses and then another important thing to mention is our drinking fountains have been turned off for the safety of the students and the drinking fountains are also in each classroom and so those have been turned off many schools have put in the water filling stations and we have really communicated that with our families so that they know that they're going to need to bring water bottles and to make sure that their kiddos are staying hydrated but we feel like turning those drinking fountains off was in the best interest of the students but again communication is critical regarding that next all right and then cafeteria and recess seems like this is um one of the areas that our families and our students are really most concerned about i met with my site council and and that's what they shared that they were most interested in and so we've made multiple changes to how we're doing our our recess and how we're having kids eat lunch and so most schools are going to an eat first and then play a model so you can see from this picture the cafeteria tables will all be facing forward at ashland we put little dots on the seats to just serve as a a placeholder now we know that kindergartners or first graders or maybe even a sixth grader might slide up and down but it's just a visual marking just to help kids see you know where they should sit to help with that social distancing the kids will face forward and and they'll go through the line first and then play and to make sure that their hands are clean they'll wash their hands in their classroom prior to going to lunch we're encouraging students to wear a lanyard or to bring a baggie to place their mask in and all this information will be clearly communicated by administration and by our teachers prior to next week we are eliminating lunch cards and so the students used to take their lunch card and there was a lot of difference the teachers would touch it student would touch it and our cafeteria workers would touch it so we're just getting rid of lunch cards all together and we have a system in place at all schools so that this won't be an issue and then we've also extended the lunch time so there'll be fewer students in the cafeteria at once as well as there'll be one primary and one intermediate grade on the playground at a time we're also going to clean or fog the playground twice a day so we recognize that our students need to play it's important that kids get outside and they play and they will interact with each other we're going to practice routines and procedures and try to you know have kids social distance to an extent but to help with that process of having their hands clean we're going to clean that equipment twice a day and our custodians have been trained on that process and then again you can see markings for social distancing so that is ashland's basketball court and i had a great group of parents that came in on saturday and they painted all of those polka dots for me and so we're using that for social distancing and also helping with our bus lanes and so our buses come right in front of where the basketball court is and so students will line up there to load for buses and it will also help students recognize what bus they're on so if you're on bus 236 you'll know that you're going to line up on the green dot every day so it'll just make that process a lot easier do you have questions about lunches or recess i have a question about lunch okay how many classes will you have did you say that we'll have two in there at a time okay so what time how long is your lunch going to last it's 20 minutes of lunch and 20 minutes i'm talking about the entire lunch about an hour and 20 minutes okay which normally would it be would be less than that we were able to to stay within the window maybe we added about 10 minutes i'd have to go back and look at it but it was a we were able to make it work thank you i know for some campuses they adjusted specials a little bit um but with 27 schools we've all just been creative and made it work so i i have a question okay um you're going to have new students new to school kindergarteners first graders what is your plan tell those kindergartners get from the parent drop-off safely to the classroom right well really clear communication we brought our kindergartners in this summer well summer like a month ago summer it seems like a really a long time so the time frames so our kindergartners have come in i know some schools are hosting like small open houses this week with new families and kindergarteners and then just really clear communication and i think that will really help and so like pictures of parent drop off picture a parent pick up and those types of correspondence with families a parent will just be dropping off the kindergartners so what's the plan for getting the kindergartner from parent drop-off to the classroom safely especially on the first day right and that is just having a lot of extra hands so we have um you know like our social worker our psychologists our you know instructional coaches those types of individuals will be housed at those main entry points to take our kindergartners to class we also ask the kindergartner parents to like put labels at their kindergartners on their students as well as i'm sorry i lost my train of thought there but um to make sure that they get to class but the the fact that we're a hybrid model will really make a difference in this situation because we'll have half the number of kindergartners and so we will be able to more easily you know take care of those kindergartners but you know we'll make sure that they get where they need to go we have our front office staff and all of our campuses have acknowledged that so we had a principals meeting this morning and we spoke exactly to those points to make sure that you know all of our students are cared for and get to where they're going and we'll have signs you know student teachers and we looked at in a school of like every possible person that could care for kids and make sure they get to where they need to go all right thank you mrs carlson yeah you mentioned uh eliminating lunch cards and the touching thereof yes you said that you had an alternate system in place i won't expect that you're speaking for everyone but could you articulate what your system is right so um we have class lists and they have the id numbers on there and so the cafeteria manager has a class list with the id numbers on there because it was proposed at one point that the students would just know their id number but we all know that that's not realistic and so the students will go in in alphabetical order because the nice part is that the teacher since we're eating first will be walking the students down so the students will enter the cafeteria those that are buying in alphabetical order and then they will go up and they'll grab their food and then the cafeteria manager who knows most of the kids anyways can simply enter their id number and then they can move on and go eat quickly thank you you're welcome any other questions okay all right and then classroom setup and communication so our teachers have been really thoughtful about designing a classroom that works for their teaching style as well as the needs of their kids but being mindful of social distancing and so this is a picture of one classroom where the desks are facing forward and then they're separated to give some social distancing i also included a horseshoe table that you know shows some social distancing and some markings so that the teacher could do some small groups you know the teachers will really use that hybrid time to continue the relationships that they've established with the remote learning and then work to develop and establish those procedures and routines because there's obviously when the students left us in march those that were at ashland or our other schools they were used to certain procedures and we've obviously changed a lot of our procedures and routine so it's going to be really important that we use that time to talk about you know where we line up and how we will enter the school and all those arrows and those systems that we've created that we're hopeful will make a difference but it's going to take some time so our teachers will use that hybrid time to really see what those students needs are because we know that the students are going to come back with some needs that are different than when they left us and also work on those routines and so we're looking forward to that we're also very grateful to the school board for our full-time social worker we know that we'll really need this full-time social worker to address some of the needs that have gone on and make sure that the emotional needs are taking care of our students and then you can see the pictures from the bottom we've just tried to really do some positive messaging around the schools so that's a sign in the bathroom that says space keeps us safe so we're just as a little reminder like in that that middle sink there just to if there's another friend on each side of you to maybe just wait and wash your hands there in the classroom though there's things like the students will use their own supplies and we've messaged that out to all of our parents as well the students will sanitize before and after so if you're going to specials we'll have a system where this parent or the student i'm sorry the teacher is sanitizer using the little pumps to sanitize the students and then when they go to specials after they're done with specials then they'll have their hand sanitized when they're returning and again that's all about communication and it's been nice this last week for the first time we've had opportunities to meet with each in each grade level we met with the special teachers yesterday because we were doing all of our meetings remotely as well and so just like it'll be nice to have the students back in person it's made a huge difference in connecting with our teachers in person and hearing what their needs are and how we can address those needs and problem solved by having in-person meetings the last week and i know all the principals have had that opportunity and i think we've made you know a lot of progress in meeting the needs of our teachers on our support staff by having those small in-person meetings the last week or two so it's it's just meeting people's needs and hearing what they need and then we'll be regularly cleaning supplies our teachers have been given the rejuvenal and the microfiber cloths and they get a new one each day and then they're picked up each night and then delivered and then they're picked up by a company at the end of the week and they get another one so that's a real nice benefit that the teachers really appreciate and then ongoing training with site administration and the nurse regarding evolving information and as we know this situation is ever changing and so we don't claim to have all the answers we know that we're gonna come up with a procedure that we think is great or and then we're going to have to make some adjustments and so it's just a commitment to our parents and a commitment to our teachers and our support staff that if we get information that's new we're going to talk about it and then we're going to have to make some adjustments and we know that that's the case and it's just being transparent and upfront with new information and then being open to new ideas so you know we don't claim that those dots on the bus line are maybe the best idea but for right now with the information we have we think that's a great idea and so so that's what we're going with and so um and that communication piece is going to be critical to the success of this working i have a question about the the desks lots of teachers have tables and especially like at the primary kindergarten how are you addressing that right so so like at the and at least at ashland they had like little pods multiple tables so they've split and so they're having two at one table i don't know what all campuses look like so they were kind of like this but a little bit bigger at ashland and so we're doing two at a table and so my site council is great so we talked about that and it seemed like a good solution on at ashland's campus i have some larger tables and so instead of doing four we did like two on one side and one on another like that would be like for a fourth grade class we had some large rectangle tables instead of having like so they're not facing each other we would just set three at a table as a solution so what and you know i don't know if you can answer this what will happen when you have all the kids back you that doesn't sound like it would work when you've got you know i've been in classrooms where there's five or six kids at a table and every table is filled right well at least at this point and we've been able to make it work or like a combination of doing like three and then maybe a desk or two and um and we'll have those conversations with the kids because all kids you know have different learning styles too and we're hopeful that students may be like i'll take the solo desk and so in some classrooms we would do three with some you know single desks but you're right we may come into you know some obstacles if our class sizes would go up significantly higher than they're at but at this point we've been able to manage with the class sizes and the spacing concerns dr mccord do we budgeted for if we get to a situation when we have everybody back that that we have to maybe convert some of those classrooms that do have tables to desks we would be able to purchase some but not for the entire district no no i don't mean the entire district because not everybody has tables but just but a lot a lot of several do over the years i mean you know how this i mean being a former principal we we pushed people to go away from desks and um and then over time we've we've gotten things back from uh property control back to classrooms that uh for deaths that are in good shape and can be used but if we see a need we'll have to calculate out um what the cost of those will be to be able to put them in but i don't know what that would be just yet okay thank you ms carlson um i think our elementary students are resilient they'll probably get used to masks but what are some of the ways that you're going to work with teachers and help students to get used to this new normal of wearing a mask especially our younger students right well right after i completed this presentation then one of our bulletin boards is a social studies on wearing masks and so i think it is really having those you know just education on why they're important and how they keep us all safe and just those kind conversations with with kids we've had kids on our campus right now in the in-service our you know on-site learning program and for the most part they've done a phenomenal job and just with some just basic prompting and reminding um they put them back on and you know they're like all of us it gets warm and and they slide down but it's just you know it is going to just take some routines and procedures and and having those breaks built into so when they can go to recess and they can go to pe and some of those built-in times where they are able to take their masks off safely i think will be important okay but i don't i don't have uh you know i mean there will be some you know i mean but it it's not going to be i think a situation the answer is that all the kids will be wearing masks so it'll be easier to manage i think if everybody's there and and make sure that we can see that you know there's examples of how kids are wearing masks and what the expectations are and i think it's about laying it out there for expectations with kids some of them will have difficulties and some will either purposefully or you know accidentally have mask issues and it's just a conversation it's we want to make sure that kids also feel comfortable uh when they're having their mask on and they are having difficulties that we are kind with them about that just because we know it's not it's not something that they they're used to on a daily basis i mean even adults aren't used to it all day long and so uh and recognizing when kids may need a break and maybe it's time to take them outside for five ten minutes and distance them and let them take their mask off but we'll be very flexible with it in terms of helping them but we will make sure that they're wearing them all right thank you dr mccord i may be getting ahead of myself on this question that i'm going to ask and that's not necessarily for you miss carlson but what having experienced um getting classrooms cleaned and having a custodian call in sick and and spreading themselves you know having having to get all the classrooms cleaned at night how are we addressing the sanitizing uh every night in um i mean i can't even imagine trying to do that yeah it so we also have hired an extra set of five custodians that if we do have absences in places we can disperse them if we have a covet case specific that'll be the covid custodial team that would go and do the extra deep cleaning uh that needed to be in specific areas if if there was contamination but they have been trained they understand what the expectations are of the nightly cleaning and so but if we run into personnel issues um we'll continue to hire but we have hired extras just to begin with knowing that this could be an issue will they will they um you know i'm just trying i'm thinking about all that they have to do and then we're adding cleaning the desks on top of that yeah we are i mean it it's a lot of extra work for everybody not just the custodians but also the teachers and the administration on campus i mean who will be cleaning the desks then uh it'll be the custodians they'll deep clean them every night every other night every other night the teachers more than likely will probably go through and wipe off their desks as well and some of them i've been told that are going to do it two and three times a day and so it'll be a collaboration but the expectation first and foremost be the custodians to go through there thank you yep right i think that's it for me unless you have any other questions i appreciate your time well thank you for explaining so well and helping us understand dr mccord just following up on ms eugetti's question the i know we were waiting on back order of the and i don't even know what they're called now but the sand sanitizing guns what's the status of those i think they're in this week or we're good bonnie thank you i will wait until then next are we bringing both of you up at the same time or one of you all right come on up we have principal from greenfield junior high mr brian yee and principal from campo verde high school dr christa cox well congratulations i didn't realize you had received your doctorate so thank you overachiever all right good evening um dr mccord and governing board thank you for allowing us the opportunity to come in speak on behalf of all the schools and just the different logistics that we've put into place um i second what suzanne said and that uh this week has been probably my favorite week of work in six months because it's been the first time that things feel like we're planning um for the normalcy of what we're used to doing um just getting back to school so you know it's a second reopening so we're trying to think through all the things that you normally do when you're opening up on the first day after summer and we're trying to make sure that we don't forget anything so we wanted to start off the first phase of planning for us has been a lot of communication and making sure that we are hearing from all of our stakeholder groups as soon as we think we've thought of everything and that we put everything into place it seems like something else comes up that we have to add and address so we've broken this up into a few areas and the first one is starting with our staff and specifically our security at the high school level all of our high school principals have been meeting more as a collaborative group now than i think we ever have before it's nice and that we feel like we have a team that we can bounce ideas off of and collaborate for the size of our schools but then it's nice to talk through because each of our campuses are slightly different what that means and maybe just to get different insight with their expertise or their background so right now with our staff we're trying to plan regular meetings and right they are through webex right now so it does make it a little bit more difficult with asking questions so we've broken it down into smaller groups as well with our department chairs our school improvement committee and what we're doing is we're like even today we practiced our presentation to the staff on not just what we're sharing with you tonight but all of the pieces of our reopening and all the communication that's going to go out to our community get feedback from then and then we are on thursday going to then we go through that with our entire campus because we feel and have found that we get more feedback and questions when we are in those smaller groups when you have 150 staff on a webex it seems like people don't want to bombard the meeting as i'm sure you can all imagine and then with our safety or when we think of our safety on our campus our high school security teams are meeting frequently with our admin team because as dr mccord just mentioned everybody's positions are changing and everybody is kind of all hands on deck and every job is everyone's job and so we are going to be meeting this week with our security and admin team one more time to just go over everything you're going to hear us discuss in the next few slides how we can monitor that and manage what that looks like because our campuses are larger and we are going to make sure to get feedback every step of the way and then make sure that as we come across some hurdles that we are anticipating that we can hopefully iron those out during the two weeks of hybrid so that when we have close to 2000 and obviously for some other high schools a lot more than that um students on our campus that we are as prepared as possible um now again the last six months have proven that we don't really ever know how to be 100 prepared but we're going to continue to do our best and we've found that listening to our stakeholders helps us really to be as prepared as possible and then governing board members dr mccord thank you for the opportunity to speak with you tonight first time i've used the microphone it truly is a privilege to be able to represent the junior high principles tonight echoing what dr cox has said the collaboration that we've been able to do as a group has pushed us and may allowed us to grow together during these challenging times and to collaborate and problem solve the different challenges that are that we each face but then also meet the the needs of each of our communities in different ways such as our buildings being laid out a little bit differently we set up very similar but it's been great to meet with them once a week or if a day doesn't go by where we're texting as a group to problem solve whatever's coming up and the the regular communication that we're having with our staff um is not just unique to greenfield junior i know this is happening at our other junior highs as well where we're meeting with our leadership teams whether it's weekly sometimes daily and we're meeting with our staff weekly to give updates or just to have time for our staff to ask questions through webex because we know a lot of times we just need to listen and hear what those concerns are and then work with them to to try to solve those tomorrow is our first staff meeting in person that we're holding typically in the past we've held that in our library but to create more distancing we are holding that in our gymnasium in our bleachers tomorrow to to welcome everyone back officially face to face and and see some of our new faces that people have not seen other than on a webex screen and so we have found that this constant communication through whether it's webex or the the weekly newsletters that we send to our staff have been key to communicating information from our leadership and from the governing board on down and very similar to what dr cox has said breaking it up into smaller groups and assigning our and other administrators to meet with department chairs specific groups on campus such as our classified staff our office staff cafeteria staff custodial crew etc so that they all have the the opportunity for their voices to be heard and then moving on to our student population we want them to be prepared when they come onto campus next week and we know that we're going to have to do a lot of kind of practice rehearsal communication once we have them there but we started trying to think outside the box of what could we do ahead of time so the couple of things that um at the high school levels the principals all collaborated and came up with two ideas one is that we have our student councils creating kind of a safety video of how to properly wear your mask how to navigate the buildings with the changes what the expectations are and kind of the bigger major changes that they'll see and that video at least i believe for all of the schools should be going out by the end of the week i know campos is scheduled to go out on friday and then the second thing that we are hosting is our link crew normally all of our freshmen and our new students are welcomed in the day before school starts they do a huge orientation it really gets them pumped and excited to join the the high school culture we weren't able to do that so in lieu of that we had a lot of our freshman parents that were reaching out and similar to what you had shared about our kindergarten students parents and families feel very similar about freshmen coming into high school they're going from a smaller campus to a larger environment and it's very intimidating and so our link crew have set up for thursday and friday sign up genius and they are taking students in groups they're scheduled for after school hours so they will start once the live lessons end and students can choose which time works for them since their parents have to bring them we are having the just the students enter the campus we're having them wear masks and then every link link leader is going to be paired up with about five or six students to make sure that it's distanced and once they have the small group of students they're going to go to just keep the rotation going around campus at that point they will show them the major areas so that they know how to navigate around campus mainly to the the locker rooms the cafeteria and they will walk through each of our main hallways so that they know how to find their classrooms on the first day they'll be provided with maps and such so that and really have that opportunity with a link leader to go over any questions that they may have they'll get to see where the nurse's office is their counseling office some of those staple areas on campus like for the campuses that have like mindfulness rooms when we think about the anxiety that some of our students may have just returning to the campus we want them to feel safe and know who to go to if if that's how they're feeling and we opened that for any freshman and or new student to the campuses and all of the high schools will be doing that we've been fortunate last year miss delton our spanish teacher she went to training the previous year for the junior high version of the link crew and that's called web where everybody belongs and that empowers our 8th grade students to be leaders on campus to welcome our new 7th graders just like dr cox said and mrs carlson said the transition for sixth graders to seventh graders is a big jumping can be very scary so we found and identified that need that we needed to have something more robust to welcome and allow our seventh graders to feel more comfortable and miss delton has taken that and ran with the program and last year she had approximately i think 50 leaders and during the the springtime and over the summer that tripled to a higher number for this year even in the midst of having to do this virtually so the excitement that our eighth graders have to welcome our seventh grade students through the web program albeit virtually they've created a video like some of the link crew students have but it shows their passion for our campus and welcoming our seventh graders and and they will be on our campus over the next three days when we open our campus for students and parents to come walk the campus to find their classrooms to identify the markings on campus look at the benches look at how the hallways are laid out and our web leaders have signed up and filled all of our spots to where we actually had to open up more spots for our web leaders to be on campus to be able to participate so we're excited for that opportunity every wednesday we have what's called our our gsc where grizzlies support and connect it's a advisory type homeroom type 30 minutes that with our new schedule in the hybrid schedule and when we go to full in person due to the alignment with global academy we had to find a way to not have an hour lunch for our students and keep our 30 minute lunches for 7th graders and 8th graders so we are are adding that 30 minute gsc time during right after lunch and so we've always had that gsc it's just always been a different period of the day but using it this year and and having every wednesday which is a non-specific live instructional day via webex but we want our students to sign in into the buzz platform every every day so every wednesday we've had our gsc time at 8 30 with our first hour teacher teacher so our students sign in and this is where we've communicated a lot of our expectations sharing information campus wide info such as moving to uh in person on the ape where unfortunately they have to see a video of myself explain some of these things to them our teachers are doing many things that are uncomfortable for them with the video and so i felt i needed to stretch myself as well and to be able to get my face out there for our students i've recorded videos to share some of this news with them and create some contests and some hopefully some excitement where students are engaged and listening to what our campus-wide expectations are and so far we've seen we've received good feedback from that where our teachers receive a specific presentation that's from our admin team that we want them to share with our students and we will continue this through once we go to in person where that will occur every monday tuesday thursday and friday where we can share important campus-wide information or if something needs to change we can distribute that information during that time where everyone's getting the information at the same time all right and then moving on to our parents um i one of the things that mr yi just mentioned that i think is important is there have been a lot of things that we've been doing over the last several months and as we're prepping for the return of reopening campus that we've gotten a lot of positive feedback from parents that they really enjoy it and hope that we continue to do those things even in years to come and so it's challenged us to change some things that i really do see us keeping so for example we had sent out a video that was just uh uh welcome it was introducing admin counseling psychologists like your key stakeholders kind of in the front office and i i've never had so many parents email me asking me if we can do that every year because they felt that it made it more intimate and personal and that they really were able to see who it was as opposed to sitting in the back of an auditorium or something like that so i i am excited to see some of the things that this is going to change for years to come um but with that the communication right now um it is weekly it is daily and so one of some of the things that the high schoolers high schools have done is a lot of newsletters we're really trying to up our social media game i feel like that's like my part-time job right now is trying to be present on social media i we have and this is across the board we have more parents um reaching out to us even through social media sending us messages there so if that's how they feel more comfortable reaching out then we want to make sure that they know that we're accessible in any way and so we're trying to do the best that we can to get parents the information as much as we think we hear it all the time we're in meetings all the time we're we're with cabinet and uh the principals and even with our staff and so sometimes on our end we think that the communication has been clear and i think that the constant reminder that we've received is that parents are overwhelmed right now there's a lot on their plates and if they have numerous students in numerous schools it's a lot of information and so we're trying to mainstream the information that goes out like campo specifically we have a newsletter and we really have tried to say no one is sending emails out if you have something to say send it to us we will include it all in one place and it goes out now there are some extenuating circumstances where we want to get something out and we don't want to wait till the end of the week to get it in a newsletter but we are trying to utilize the newsletters and the social media similar to the elementaries we are including our site council to try to get input there uh those those meetings have been a little bit smaller than normal and i think that with that virtual presence and having those through webex that it's a little bit more difficult for our parents to they they want to attend in person so we're excited for i believe this month all the high schools are going to be hosting their first in-person site council meeting and i think that we'll continue to get more positive feedback there and then we are trying to work on making our faces more seen so stepping out of our comfort zone similar to what we are asking our staff like mr yi said and recording ourselves and um doing more interactive things through social media and even if it's sending out uh we've put our pictures on everything uh including in our when you walk into our front office we have tvs in a lot of our central areas and we're using those for similar to like um a doctor's office where it just kind of scrolls through the basics and we've tried to put counseling images on everything our images there's a couple of times where we look up and it's a little bit like startling because not used to seeing your face on everything but we are trying to do a good job of making sure that people know who they're talking to behind a screen because we've we all know it we've lost a little bit of that personal piece and and we're trying to overcompensate and make up for that until things return a little bit back to normal i'll echo what dr cox said about the overwhelming of communication that could come out especially at the beginning of going to the online online instruction and we received concerns from our stakeholders about the number of emails that they were receiving not only from our teachers but from you know their elementary kids teachers and then their high school teachers as well and so we tried to limit just like dr cox said the newsletters that go out to our community and so i took that on and and i send out a nightly newsletter to our parents that give gives them updates on what has occurred or any new information also with step-by-step instructions for our students to receive for the next day where they're supposed to sign in what time how to do that etc and so those new newsletters have gone out to our parents to our students and to our staff so that we're all receiving the same information and it's been great to have our tech services provide troubleshooting information that we can include in the newsletters along with communication from district that they have been sharing with our community but we put that in our newsletter as well so that all of the information is in one location for our parents to access and it's while it can be overwhelming at times to continue to do that each night we have found it beneficial and we have received positive feedback from our parents on as they navigate through the online world and so we'll see how often we do that when we go to in person we'll probably continue that for the first week of hybrid but then taper off to where it's not every day and i do know that the other junior highs as well continue to share through their newsletters to their community whether it's once a week or sometimes daily as well but also through a lot of their social media as well that they're sharing information such as their schedules or expectations the verbage that's specific to their campus that they have been sharing out so this next slide we felt it wasn't this has been in here for the last couple of board meetings but we felt it was important to just keep this included we know a lot of families are having questions about this and so we just felt it was important to keep this in here tonight in case if anybody is watching but i think we're good to go on to the next slide can i ask a question absolutely um with the a through l and then and through z is it worked out pretty much evenly i i will say the a through l for all of the high schools i know is a little bit heavier in numbers um but it really has worked out pretty smooth what we've done is if we have a family that has a conflict if they have two children with maybe last names or something along those lines we are trying to maybe push those to the m through z since we know that the numbers there is a little less but it really we were i'll be honest that we were anticipating and planning we put together a spreadsheet we thought we were going to have all these changes and at least for campo it's been very minimal like under maybe 15 families that have asked for a special situation or change based on their circumstance so and i'm not sure if it's the same for you brian it's been very similar it was it's been about a 60 40 with the a through l um but we had we broke down every class to see what their class periods were when they broke down by that and the i think the largest class that we had after the split was a class of 19 and there were a handful of those otherwise they were all closer to like a 12 13 kind of split so fortunately it worked out and just like dr cox said if if we've had requests to change we've moved them to the m through z to decrease that percentage this is where um the a lot of the collaboration with our fellow peers at the principal ranks about a staggered release and so that previous schedule it showed at the end of each class period there's a staggered release time so at the junior high level we have a 10 minute passing period window that we are are using for our passing period time and each of our junior highs are doing it a little bit different but very similar so i'll explain how we're doing it at greenfield the the 10 minutes so class ends on the 30 at the 30 of every hour during the class day we are dismissing our seventh graders at nine at the 30 and they have five minutes to go to their next classroom and so they'll walk across the campus if they need to get go to the restroom that's when they do that but they'll go straight to their next class while our 8th graders stay in class for those additional five minutes so when our seventh graders are then in their classrooms our eighth graders then dismiss at the 35 and then they walk and go to their next classroom if you can see on the on the picture in the pictures our hallway we do have the blue dividing line and our our one of our mantras on our campus which i believe is a lot at our junior high other junior highs as well are stayed to the right just like our driving drivers on the road we're staying to the right and that blue dividing line is always to our left and we do have just like the elementary schools we have little we have x's that mark outside the classroom for those class times where there may be 8th graders still in the classroom and they have to wait to dismiss we do have designated markings on our our floors for our students to wait that have that social distance in between in between them until they can go into the classroom we do have the the hallway doors we only walk in on the right and then when we exit the courtyard doors we exit through the right as well and so the arrows indicate that around campus and our our custodial crews across the junior highs and our building managers and i know our admin teams have been out um laying down the the tape and the arrows and signs across the different campuses across the junior highs everyone has a little bit different signage some are fancier than others we're using the blue painters tape because we feel if we have to make a change then we can pull up that tape and adjust accordingly some other campuses are had have pre-made signs that they made in their school colors to designate which way the flow of traffic goes in our hallways and and outside in the courtyards as well well congratulations on getting the line so straight with painters tape so at the high schools very similar we all collaborated and i will say that although each of the high schools may have a small deviation from this plan but they we are all pretty consistent we are doing for the most part one-way halls and um the the map picture isn't showing the greatest unless if you have really great vision on the slide but um every when you walk in if you notice on the top right picture both of the doors say enter whereas normally the right as an enter the left is an exit all every single hallway at campo is going to be you only walk in one direction and so that will really help when we have our staff stepping out into the hall during passing periods to just know that everybody should be going one way we know that this is going to take a little bit to train our students and so that's why we decided to just make this decision to start with the hybrid schedule while we have half the students on campus we had originally started planning to do very similar to what mr yi and the junior high principles were doing but we realized that with the number of students that are coming in and out of some of our doors i mean it it really bulks up and so we even though the way that we're doing it it seems like it might take a little bit more time to teach it up front and it may take some students a little bit longer to get across campus because they're having to go out and follow a certain pathway we do believe that um firmly that it's gonna alleviate the flow and we're not going to see 50 kids bunched up at a door trying to get in and out of a doorway at once we we were excited to each of the high schools tried to put their own spin a lot of the signs that we're putting up have something to do and tie into our campuses so at campo we always talk about the campo way so we're really excited about this all of our hallways now have arrows that say in their title camp away so they're just every time you walk into a hallway there's no mistaking if you should be going one way or the other and they're about every six feet apart and then at the entryway and exit way of every door you'll see something similar to this and when you go down to the end of this building you see two giant um copper signs that say exit so that it's very clearly marked for anybody coming in and out and then what we're doing these maps will be sent out ahead of time to our entire community and uh when our freshmen come to do their tours we're passing out campus maps as well just so they can get familiar with that and as far as the release time goes um we have taken a different approach in that since we are asking some if you look at these maps closely enough you'll recognize that depending on where your classroom is in the building you may be taking a longer way to get out of the building as opposed to maybe there's a door right there but it kind of goes against the flow of traffic and so we are taking the classrooms that are kind of on the outsides of the building and we're releasing we're letting the teachers know they're releasing first so that they have the most time to get across campus and then the classrooms that are right by the door they're going to be kind of the ones to exit last um we i'll be honest we've all tasked different assistant principals and like our building managers with um helping organize this and when this one was first presented it took a little bit to wrap our minds around but we were really confident and feel that it's going to go smoothly and similar to what mr yee said we a lot of this is let's see how it goes and if we're wrong then we're going to change the plan again and go from there but this is right now the plan we're going to start with on tuesday and i failed to note that our hallway doors starting in the morning will be propped open that go into the hallways to reduce the number of contact for students and staff touching the doors and then at the end of each class period our teachers one of their new norms is to prop their hallway or their classroom door open so that reduces the number of contact with their doors as well and so students literally just walk through a hallway and walk through a classroom door without having to open doors to get into a hallway or a classroom and that's across the junior highs as well and that i can echo that for all the high schools as well that they're all being tasked with that as well so any questions on the staggering release or hallway setups i do want to go back to the communication i just want to say how much i appreciate the hard work that's gone into that i mean trying to get everything in one location so parents aren't overwhelmed and communicating every night that's that's a huge step up especially at a high school and a junior high level from from what you've done previously and i really really appreciate the efforts on communication because communication is always working until it doesn't and you don't know that it's not working until you are confronted with the problem of not having had that communication so the efforts of being proactive and really getting out there i think that's really important thank you all right so moving on to our buildings the this slide is really more specific to like our cafeterias and some of our larger buildings and rooms on campus and some of the pictures you're going to see here just are examples of how we're spacing students out and how we are going about signage so at the high schools the cafeterias we've had to be very creative some of the high schools for example campos cafeteria is rather small so it's it's a little bit more difficult in there and what we've done is we have a stage that's in there that normally is not used for tables and we've just accepted that we need to make it for tables so we've put about four tables up on that stage and as you can see in the picture up there we have a sign on every single table in the cafeteria we're limiting the chairs we do have a security officer and usually our sro are in are in the actual cafeteria throughout the entire lunch and so we have trained and asked them to just monitor that their high school students um that table right there looks like it would normally if you pulled up some more chairs take eight students but really it's like 16 of them that like to pull up with their friends so um we understand that we're gonna have to monitor that quite a bit until they get used to that and then you'll see the four students per table sign at the bottom of that we all the high schools are trying to put a positive spin on things so it's just our kind of our slogan i guess right now is help keep sam campos safe and so on um all the different uh signs you'll see different positive sayings like that to try to just be optimistic about it our classrooms are we have a lot of tables so i'm going to go back to that and i will say that that's something that we as soon as we knew that this was going to be part of our plan we started working with our um uh facilities to try to figure out what we have and what we don't have and so for right now we are changing out we did have a lot of desks not a ton but we had some desks that weren't being used or kind of set to the side for storage and we've pulled those out and gotten them into the classrooms that had a lot of tables and we have science labs where they only have lab tables so we're trying to say we'll bring in extra chairs or desks to the side or maybe down the row of the lab room and just separate maybe you only have two or three students at a lab table as opposed to normal the normal six that you would have um so just getting really creative with the classroom set up um and we have um our our band rooms our choir rooms they're they're all working uh diligently to just luckily they do have larger space so they're able to spread out and looking at our numbers um when because i'll be honest at the high schools we're not as worried for a lot of the buildings during the hybrid schedule it's more of the concern when we return in all and that's what we're planning for so the hybrid is just practicing it all so in our larger areas we are looking at class size numbers and if there's a class that we feel is going to be too large to fit in a regular classroom we're using some of our other facilities to host those classes so for example we have a couple of our ap lit classes that those kids are really proud and we don't want them to feel like they can't stay in there and that the numbers are a little bit higher and so we are going to have that teacher teach out of our auditorium potentially our library because there is a lot of space in there that during class periods isn't always being used so we're getting creative with our space around campus and then with the restrooms you'll see some pictures on the next slide but we also put signs up outside of all of our bathrooms that just say this many students at a time and it matches the number of stalls that are in there to just limit again at the high school level the bathrooms seem to be the place that students like to hang out so we're trying to really enforce and limit that and have asked our security and our teachers to just kind of if you see um students trying to gravitate to hanging out just kind of do a sweep and tell them that they need to line up and wait outside until there's more room available and i think i'm going to save a couple of these for the next slide we do have a self-filling water station in each of our buildings i know at the other high schools not all of them have them in every single building but at each of the high schools i believe based on conversations with them that they at least have some the nurse has most of our nurses have stations where they can fill up water there as well so we're going to be educating and really promoting our students and we have for weeks to please make sure you're prepared with water and then making sure that they know where those fillable stations are we did not have one in one of our buildings but a few weeks weeks ago one of our boosters pick up the cost to put one in the last building that we needed so i think that's the goal for all the high schools is to eventually try to have that taken care of just for cleansing cleanseliness um and then i think the rest is on the next slide so i'll let you talk and save the rest for next and so for our cafeteria situation we borrowed from the elementary model and we have the benches and so we separated those into three so those are divided into three for students three at a bench and our bottom right picture on the presentation is mrs moorhead's band classroom and she has hers already spread out in social distance and she had enough seats in there for her highest class that she would have so she was able to to do that and set that up in her classroom the that next slide showed how we have other areas where we distributed our tables and benches for our students of those bottom two right pictures outside this past summer we were fortunate that we were able to fence in our that dirt area that houses our a la carte lines and that now allows us to put benches out there where our students can be inside a campus and so not have that the the the street right there at their fingertips to run away which never happened but it always surprised me that we never had that enclosed so we have it enclosed now so we moved our our benches out there to create not only more space on the interior of our courtyard which we used to have for under each ramada so now we have three bench picnic type benches under the ramada to where we have it set up outside for students and then that other picture you can see we put benches along the interior walls to spread out the areas for our students and just today we were able to count all of the seats that we have inside the cafeteria in the new area along the walls along with now allowing students to if they would like to to eat on the grass picnic style to bring their own blanket or towel that they could sit on and and have that option as well to to utilize the space that we have in our campus and we have approximately 500 seats that we would have during a lunch period which right now addresses our student population for each lunch period if we had to identify a specific spot for every student to have a socially distanced area on the campus and i know the other junior highs were doing the exact same thing i know highland junior was making benches in their woods shop over the past weekend and previous week i know mesquite jr was doing the same to create additional seating for their students that they could add to areas where there was not seating previously to continue on with these pictures like mrs carlson said and dr cox has mentioned the spray bottle and with the cleaning solution of the rejuvenal and the microfiber towel we felt it was important for our our staff not only the custodial staff but for our teachers to know where those are located at in each classroom so we identified a specific spot in each classroom that's close to the door so that the teachers know where that's at in case they need to use it if they're subbing in a classroom or if a substitute needs to know where that's at but just as important for a custodial crew for the ease of them to refill those bottles they can identify it right when they walk in to see if it's low they can refill it and then also to grab the towel and put a new towel on there as part of the routine because we wanted to make that those additional responsibilities that they have as easy as possible for them and so we were able to install hooks in every classroom to do that and then that picture to the right we um we wanted to address when our custodians went to a classroom if a teacher came back to the classroom after that room was cleaned whether they were tutoring or they were coaching or they just came back at the end of or sometime earlier in the evening which we know teachers always come back to work extra that we wanted that room to be cleaned before the teachers and students got back the next day so our leadership team worked with our building coordinator to just come up with a simple green and red card system that if a teacher goes in to the classroom after school hours that they just flip the card to red so that the custodial crew knows that even if they have gone through it already they need to go back in and touch up some of those contact areas whether it's just the door the desk that they can make sure that each room is being addressed at the end of each night so that each day we're starting off with a sanitized room and along with that we're we're asking our students and we've been sharing this through our nightly newsletters that we're in this together and so our students have some responsibility in helping with the wellness of our campus and so we're asking them to bring disinfectant wipes or cleaning wipes to campus with them their own personal supply and that the expectation is when they walk into a classroom before they sit down at the desk that they personally clean the desk themselves with the with their own supply of the the disinfectant or cleaning wipes if a student does not have their own supply which we know are in demand and very scarce right now it we're asking the students their responsibility is to let that teacher know that they don't have any and the teacher can spray the area down and the student will then use paper towels that are supplied in each classroom to then wipe that area down and so where just like dr cox mentioned that first two weeks of hybrid getting our students understanding of our new norms and our protocols we're going to lean heavily on that those first couple weeks so that it just becomes part of the norm for our students when they come in that that's part of their routine not that our custodial crews are not cleaning it but it's just another layer of protection for themselves for their fellow students and for our staff that we want once again everyone to take part in and ownership and responsibility for their part in making this happen and just to wrap up the the previous slide in the slide kind of went hand in hand so um a couple of images that i wanted to to talk on um is at the high school levels there's so much that um is driven by our students and that that school culture and ownership and our students want to get back to their clubs their athletics their their their high school years and so we are um right now we know we're not quite there yet but we want them to start thinking of ideas and they are presenting ideas to us and um they are even within the realm of um socially distancing and and all of that they are working really hard to bring some of this stuff back into school even if it has to change the way that it looks so as far as like virtual assemblies go one of the things i wanted to point out the top left picture i didn't really know how how else to to show that to you guys but all of the high schools do have in the gyms and out on the field the capability to do live streaming and i'll i'll be honest that um i was watching i've seen some of it before but this last week i was watching some of it again just to kind of see the quality and it it's like hd like it looks like you're at the movies so we're really really excited that we have that feature because it allows us if we want to talk about like a welcome back assembly and our student council wants to do something they can either go out onto the field or into the gym and do their normal assembly where you usually have two thousand students or a thousand students at any given point in the the bleachers the teacher can just tune into this from their classroom and it can live stream virtually so it allows the high schools to do some of those interactive and engaging things that happen now again we have quite the focus on academics and norms and procedures that we have to get to first but our students are really excited to get some of these things moving and right now a lot of our clubs are coming to the rescue and helping us with a lot as well so at the different high schools each of the different clubs that they have are being tasked with and really they're the ones that came to us and were like what can we do to help so we have a one club that is just going around putting positive notes and posters all over campus to welcome students um we have another uh club that reached out that focuses on community service that asked what they could do to help custodial our custodial crew and help freshen up campus in in terms of the grounds and it's super sweet so we're just trying to let them feel like they they have ownership over the campus as well um but their their our students in our community are really really excited to get back um and again all of us principals were like sharing ideas so when one of our club sponsors bring something up and want to do it i'm sending a quick text i know mr yee mentioned i feel like uh the administrators right now are definitely um on the same page a lot more and it's nice because you can't think of all those ideas so we're sharing a lot of those different ideas for what it's going to look like and then as far as i i didn't mention it on the last slide but at the high schools that have the outdoor seating um we have also similar to all the junior high principals spread those out so um normally um and i'll use campo as an example we have a ramada and then there's kind of the ramada to the side by the cafeteria where there are there are picnic tables like one after another and so what we've done is um we spread them out but we don't have a lot of shaded areas so when you walk very similar to the picture the the bottom right where they're in the walkway kind of down we've done that and we have zip tied laminated signs to each of the tables that say the same just for per table and we've asked our security while they're doing their rounds and walking that if they see anyone taking advantage of that to just kind of redirect our students and remind them of what the new social norms are for our outdoor areas so i think that was everything that we kind of touched on on the last slide and at this point i don't know if anyone has any questions for the junior high or high school levels i don't have a question but i do have a comment and it's for all three of you and all of the all of the principals in the district having done this for a long time i can't even imagine i've actually had nightmares about it um but i want to just say that this is making me feel a whole lot better because i've been very concerned and worried about all of it and i just want to say thank you to all of you i think you've done a fabulous job thank you i had a question about i really think this is a great idea with the cloth and the cleaner right there in a certain spot are other schools doing this as well because you know being able to find that and know where it is i think that's pretty important to having it being useful to people so i know with our collaboration our discussion with our junior high principles when i shared that others were going to do something similar and then until they could buy the hooks because i did send my assistant principal out to lojos before you gave out the idea to go secure enough for every classroom office location on campus to have the hooks we did we did share that with others and um while they're looking to do something similar in the meantime they did find a central location so such as the desk in the in the classroom that their custodial crew would know where to go to exactly okay that's great what about at the high school um we just chose because the hooks were all sold out at lowe's so we decided to just say the the desk with the teacher um but it was actually mr yi was the one that had even thought about that and we appreciated it because i could see a teacher easily putting it in their shelf or in a cabinet or feeling like they're doing their job to keep their uh classroom tidy but then a custodian how long are they going to search for it and given all the extra work that we're asking them to do right now we wanted it to be as efficient as possible and i i will share that marcy has set up a meeting on thursday morning with all the high school and junior high principles where we are going to go more in depth on all of our plans so that we can collaborate one last time before tuesday to make sure if there's a little idea that seems simple but i mean our our brains are a little bit emotional right now right we're not we're not all thinking of everything and so i we are looking forward to that final planning meeting that if one school is doing something that maybe is going to benefit all campuses we're going to kind of share those ideas well it is a lot of work i mean i i really i know that we've gotten emails from parents but we're we're taking a two years worth of work and putting it into a couple weeks really because we would have had a year of making the decision and then a year of planning and we made a decision and now we're trying to to really plan for a lot of changes in a very short time so i do appreciate all the work that everyone's put in the administration i know the teachers the staff everybody has really you know this is what we do in education we collaborate we communicate we really put our hearts into it and i just don't i don't know another place that does that better than public education so thank you for all your contributions thank you thank you dr cox and mr yee at a point when we move to full time in person are you monitoring and keeping track of and i'm sure you are so i don't want to presume anything but the largest number of students in your classes when folks are back in person full time and how are we going to handle that have has that been a part of the discussion i can speak firsthand at campo i'm pretty sure that my registration ap has given me those numbers like 10 times a day and and we are right now when i i mentioned a moment ago that we know we already have three sections that i can think of off the top of my head that it wouldn't be ideal to put them in a classroom so that we're already identifying them and working with that teacher to start in a different environment on tuesday because we don't want them to be in their classroom for hybrid and then have to change the routine for those students come the 21st so um but we are going to have to monitor that because right now we have three identity three sections identified um but if that changes we would rather make that decision to move the location of the classroom sooner um and i i know that um missy has been heavily involved in helping us that if our numbers are at a point where we maybe need to offer an extra section or look at potentially getting a position posted for another staff member it's been a daily conversation at the high school level between district and the sites and very similar we i've tasked my assistant principal and our dean they oversee a different grade level and they've monitored the the enrollment and the rosters for our our campus and have to get to a certain level we do look to make the adjustments sooner for a hybrid so that if we don't have to change it in two weeks and we are waiting for just some last minute additional numbers from missy udall regarding as we transition to um the in person that if we need to adjust that we would be able to work with her for additional staffing and she just granted us an additional replaced an english position on campus we had a individual move over to global and so we were able to fill and post that position and hire someone this week where previously when the first transitions happened we lost a couple teachers and we absorbed that within our class ftes and it did not raise it to where it was an alarming level but at this point she knew that she couldn't do that or we could not do it this time and so we were able to fill that position right away and i do believe the other junior highs are doing the same thing very similar i know they when we talk that it's a daily watch list that we're looking over to ensure that the class sizes are not getting too large the the impact of that though obviously is a changing of schedules and we try to minimize that by keeping the student with the same teachers but just different hours and we've had um great support from our parents that understand when we share the reasons why that that schedule's impacted to reduce the class size and they've been supportive of that thank you and mrs carlson i don't want to look past you but i'm assured and assuming that the elementary schools are doing very similar things thank you i you know the the caveat there is that we all know what class averages are and we also know that class averages lie uh there are the averages and then there are actual numbers and so i'm really interested in the actual numbers not interested in the averages uh the average is average of the actual numbers right correct and uh i would echo what miss eugenie has said my my compliments and appreciation to all of you uh at the administrative level at the campus level for the work and the thought that has gone into this uh it is as good as i have seen and yet you've already acknowledged that nothing is perfect and we're going to be making adjustments on the fly and i appreciate that thank you very much thank you anybody else for them again thank you guys this is extremely informative and i think what miss you jetty said is i think this is an important presentation tonight but i think this is the most important piece of it for the mere fact that people can actually see what's going on on campuses and help put minds at ease and again to reiterate what you all said this is a work in progress this is something we've never done before and so we're going to be building the plane in the sky and we'll continue to build it thanks again thank you thanks next up we have director of health services jennifer frost good evening dr santa cruz members of the board dr mccord thank you for having me here tonight um we've been talking about a lot of these things over the last few weeks and months and so tonight i'm just going to go over again what we're doing in health services to monitor the symptoms of the students to support the students while they're on campus as well as the staff so um jennifer can you just pull your mic up a little bit i think you would we'd hear you a little better i need to get a teacher voice yes um one of the first things that we've been going over is making sure that we're looking at all the symptoms per cdc and department of health protocol and one of the things that i found was that there was a lot of anxiety regarding these symptoms because as you may already know they're very similar to the regular flu to a cold and so some of the things that we've gone over with the staff with my health assistants and the nurses is how to assess those students and make sure that they're assessing them appropriately and i'm extremely lucky because they already do that they already see those students and ask them all the important questions to make sure that when they're coming into the health office that it's actually a health issue as you know as teachers and educators students will come to the nurse's office for a variety of reasons and that headache may actually be a stomachache and that stomach ache may be that they don't like math and so the nurses and health assistants already do that on a daily basis in their day-to-day jobs not during a pandemic and so i'm extremely lucky because they took the information from the cdc as well as department of health as that part and then they have also looked at what they already do in the health office and so i believe our kids are in great hands and and will continue to have the kids come in as they need to we have asked that the teachers not send students down that aren't there for health reasons and so we did develop a guideline for teachers so that when they have a student that needs maybe a safety pin or a change of socks things like that that they're not being sent down to the health office so that we're not having healthy kiddos go down and be with the kids that aren't feeling well we did develop actually i didn't develop our marketing team developed a lot of great signage and education for stopping the spread of germs for how to wash your hands how to wear a mask all those things again very lucky for that department because they are able to make everything look great a lot of the signage is appropriate for the school as far as colors it fits in with their theme it's just something that i think helps the kids feel more comfortable but also doesn't look out of place necessarily again face coverings we've gone over a lot of that one of the things i've really appreciated working this year with education is that the staff and the teachers want to make sure that the kids are wearing their mask appropriately but there's a lot of support in making sure that we support them in the a way that it's a positive message and not something that's um what's the word i'm looking for it's not going to be a um right right and so um i really love that they want to make this something that they know it's uncomfortable necessarily it's new um but just to make it positive um the resources for testing we have a lot of resources to give families so if they have questions they can go to their health assistant or their nurse on campus they can find reef resources for testing there's isolation and quarantine guidelines that they have as well as some collaboration i've been lucky enough to have with some pediatricians in our community as well as pch's east valley location and so we've been able to get information from pediatricians in the area so that we know what they're seeing as well as what their guidelines and protocols are the next slide jennifer if i can ask so when you say resources available for testing isolation and quarantine and maybe you're going to going to address this in a moment but do families need to call their nurse is that available online is that something you send home if the kids come to the office or how can parents access that at every level so elementary and secondary and we do have some resources on our family website as well but the resources that we've put together for health offices the nurses are putting them out through newsletters they're available on the campus website they can contact their health assistant or their nurse and the nurse or health assistant can send them to them a variety of ways we're trying to be creative just as you've heard you know we don't want to send a lot of things home with kiddos just because they might not make it and also because they're not always on campus every day okay thank you miss frost can you speak to the internal communication that is occurring between and among health assistants and health offices as issues arise questions occur just a dialogue so that everyone knows what is happening across town are you talking about within the campuses within the within the campuses and even within the district yes um so another way that i got incredibly lucky is these nurses and health assistants are in constant communication with each other and with me and they are they're very supportive um one of them will send an email out and say you know this is an idea i had from my office what do you guys think and you'll have 57 emails a minute later about how they want to do it or how they like that idea they would not steal the hooks from lowe's [Laughter] the other way that they've supported each other is that we have a group of representatives they're a group of nurses that work together as kind of a middle step and they also answer questions as well and then i was extremely lucky because the district went ahead and granted me the ability to have two extra nurses that are working as a little bit of everything to be honest but they're helping with contact tracing with attendance protocols with orientation of new nurses and so those two nurses have been another place where the staff can go to for questions and resources thank you so i'm trying not to read the slides but to be honest there's so much information one of the things that we have found helpful is frequently asked questions because there are so many of them and so the first one was is the school going to send home every student that has just a runny nose and so one of the things we really wanted to send home for parents is that if they update their olr and their health history and we know that the student has chronic allergies or a migraine issue those things that really helps the nurse investigate what's going on with that child online registration if you're wondering yes um and so we really want to work with families do we want to send home every student with a runny nose no but with an abundance of caution we want to make sure that we're not allowing children that are symptomatic to stay in school and so working together with parents for that resource and making sure that you know this the parents know that if we have that information up front it'll be much easier for us to delineate whether this child is really sick or this is a chronic issue we have some handouts that have been great 10 things to do before school to make sure kids are ready to make sure that they're comfortable with the changes in everyday campus activities a daily health assessment for students that's something that we have out that the parents are going to be able to do every day with their child to make sure that their child's ready to go to school whether it be a fever or cough or runny nose and then when my when can my child return to school is something that we came up with because there are many different guidelines again cdc local guidelines and we wanted to make it an easy to read platform yes platform so that the parents can see exactly when their child will be able to return to school if they are sent home with covet-like symptoms if they're tested if what the test result is and then how they would come back from there so some of the questions that we've been getting as well is what happens if there is a positive teacher or student in my child's class the the district has been very very good about wanting to be transparent and vulnerable so of course just an example in the secondary schools typically if there's something like a communicable illness like lice they wouldn't send a letter out to all the six classes of that high school student but we've changed that for this year and so if there is a positive student in one class that student every class that student attends in the secondary level we'll get a notice um and from there we've been working with epidemiology from the department of health and then those contacts will be notified as appropriate if they meet that close contact guideline um what if they've been exposed outside of school is another big question and we would ask that they develop a close relationship with their health assistant or nurse on campus and call them right away and then the health assistant or the nurse will give them the guidelines of what to do next and the last one will i be notified if there's a positive student absolutely again with that transparency they will be notified that there is a positive student in class and then we will give them more information as the case evolves i have a question um hypothetical obviously oh my gosh everything that we're dealing with right now with having the number of charter schools and other school districts surrounding us that have opened and let's just say that some one of the schools has to close not ours but one of the others do we have any kind of a protocol about accepting students i know we can't pick and choose who we accept in public education but let's say one of this one of the charter schools has to close and 25 kids want to come to the district what how would we handle that mr actually mr carr brought that up at the last meeting and so we've not developed something in writing however with the media the way it is i know that we would be alerted as soon as it happened that the school closed and then we would have to work at that the department of health would quarantine would recommend quarantine for the students that were directly affected and we would have to work with them as far as whether we not we could let certain children come in would you be notified by the department of health which students would have to be quarantined um that i don't know is that a is that a um i don't believe it would be a violation no because it's a community health issue i think it would depend more on the parent notifying the health department where they're going does that make sense and so i think if we know we would address it but there could be circumstances where we don't right so i my question was so if if a parent we had a question about this if a parent if a child is um tested positive for kovaid and what is the first thing that they should do they should call well not the first thing they should do but as far as the school goes should they call the nurse first should they or the attendance office and let them know how do we what's the communication line i don't typically call the nurse at the school ever so i don't have that phone number you know so how how do you do that well there's two ways the first way is when you call the main number of the school it'll give you the option to choose the nurse's office but one thing that we've done that i think is a really great idea in theory is that we have created two attendance lines and so when you call the the school and you're calling your child in sick for the day it goes over the symptoms of covid and it says if you're calling your child in sick for any of these symptoms press two um if all other symptoms press one or not symptoms but all other reasons and so the attendance clerks are able to take that information from that second voicemail and put it on a spreadsheet that they share with the nurse the nurse then is able to follow up with those families and so if they say yes it's positive covid the nurse will know right away that they can call that family and give them that information that's great thank you and then let's see okay so then if if they call in and they say i've tested my childhood test deposit for covid the nurse will will talk to the nurse so the nurse will call them back and get the next information in the next steps of how to come back when to come back those kinds of things and other things that they need help with we'll then do the does the child or parent need to reach out to all of the teachers just like you normally would when you're absent and just send an email and say we're homesick can we get the schoolwork or is that something that automatically will start happening on the school end one of our checklists the the positive student checklist is named appropriately it actually talks about having the nurse speak with the administrator about you know yes we have the student the student's positive they're going to be out this amount of time the administrator would then lead that chain of events as far as supporting the student while they're at home if they feel well enough then they can receive their work and that's the great thing about the having the platform that we do now is that it's flexible and so they can still receive their work on that buzz platform like they are right now okay great so i guess i would just say to the parents reach out to your nurse or attendance yeah or attendance and then if you feel like you need to reach out to somebody else then do that otherwise there are things in place that will start we'll re the schools will reach out to you as well to make sure you're supported in that absolutely okay thanks any other questions no thank you jen very nice two weeks before i move on i have a can we go back to secondary for a couple of questions that i forgot we're past that slide of course sure who do you want to pick on so i i wanted to pick on junior high i know that at the high schools we have a student success center so if students choose a flex schedule they can go into the they can take an in-person class and go into the student success center to take their online class but i'm not aware of what we have at the junior high level to support that flex schedule so can you explain absolutely we did implement a center for success at the junior high level so if the student is on the flex schedule and there is a gap in between their courses or we know when our classes end at the 30 their global class will start at the 30 as well so they can go right into our center for success success area which on our campus will be the library i know our other junior highs are very similar to doing this the same so that the librarian can monitor or assist as needed as they work on their chromebooks okay that's great then the other question i had was there's some concern about students having to transition from in person to online particularly if they end up getting sick with covid or transition from online to in person if they decide to change so what help is there to help students make that transition well it's been very clear from the beginning since we've gone to online instruction that all of our teachers whether it's our campus teachers or global that they are following the scope and sequence of the buzz platform and the florida virtual programming and the curriculum so that if in those situations when it does occur that a student can transition back and forth as easy as possible and we know it's not going to be ideal but the things that are in place are working with our counselors and and it's been mentioned earlier tonight the the social workers that all of our junior highs now have that will be another essential team player in in this transition that she our social worker she can help with the families transitioning and that a lot of that is the communication piece with our teacher so if we're getting someone from global finding out obviously what their grades are where they're at if the grades are lower than what they should be finding you know what we can do to help them move forward on our campus this year and i know some other junior highs as well we've gone to a campus-wide no consequence late policy with the situation that we that we're in we know some students will have troubles turning in late work and so we've developed a new policy that would allow students to turn in late work with and that they can see receive full credit up until the week before the grading period ends um to compensate for some of those situations that will that we know students will face when they transition all right thank you very much i appreciate that i think that's all my questions okay thank you sir all right next we'll talk about employees mr mcintosh all right good evening dr santa cruz governing board and dr mccord i'm here to talk about the employees and the changes over the past couple weeks we have our most susceptible personnel have now been placed at global so we think that all of the necessary changes with those teachers have been made we continue this week since the families made their choices to either change from global back into in person or vice versa we have done all of our staffing changes and we continue to do those based on the class size and the ratios and i'm very pleased to say that we're looking really good at the elementary and the junior high and the high school as far as the majority of the class sizes they're below the ratios that are set by the district [Music] and then if there is a need the principals will reach out to either myself and or missy udall and then determine what other types of changes we can do to lower those class sizes whether it's six fifths or scheduling change or adding a teacher as a whole so we're continuing to do that on the class sizes employees we report all the identified coveted cases with the employees and we use the guidelines in the forms that were created to report those to the necessary departments of health and then we have trained all of our faculty and staff on proper safety protocols prior to the students arriving next week and all of the um employees have been educated on the signs and symptoms of the cova to help identify students and or that's signs that they may be experiencing in the classroom mr mcdosh yes as far back to the staffing assignments and the class sizes wow and again i know the class averages or be what they may but there's then the extremes on either side of that is what you're saying is the reality of it so i appreciate that you're looking carefully at that to make sure that we can have the desks and have and dr cox that you mentioned you know at in the case that we can't then move it to the lecture hall or the auditorium let's figure out ways to to do this best we can but i anticipate that there might be we might have some students coming back or some students who will enroll which didn't go through this last process of parents choosing where they were going to be at so how will you continue to support our teachers who are already in place and our students who are already in place in making sure that they have what they need even as we add in the students who come back and enroll so right now as i said the the majority of the class sizes are left well below the ratios in order for growth but if they start to bubble up and get to the top there we we will hire new teachers we'll post and hire new teachers that's what we're doing right now in a couple situations at a couple of the high schools we only have two postings at the elementary so and we purposely left those tried to in the majority of cases you know some room for growth there for when those students arrive great thank you okay we we we sat this afternoon and he had every just talking elementary right now every elementary campus and every class size and and you know there were some that had 13 and then there were some that were up in you know in the upper 20s and so mr mcintosh obviously is keeping an eye on those grade levels that have a higher number uh and there may be already postings for those positions but when he talked about room for growth there's there's some room for growth there which is good but we got to manage that as well moving forward i mean we don't want to go a class to go from 20 to 32 you know on day two when we're fully in person so it'll also have to be something where i know like the elementary level especially you know parents are very interested those left and came back and maybe they wanted so-and-so's teacher well we got to definitely look at numbers and hold on to those numbers in those classrooms and so that may not happen for them as much as we'd like it to and much as they'd like it to we have to go with their space burst for safety purposes and then move from there i think that's a good point dr mccord even in the high schools i think and junior highs too have the level classes i know that there's been times where we and we try to accommodate the best we can but we're in a little bit different situation this year and i hope that our parents will understand as we are trying to accommodate the needs but also keep our class sizes to the most to the best that we can so hopefully we can all work together and find ways to accommodate that the best that we can but still maintain those class sizes okay moving on to return to work and the precautions and procedures for the employees we have ppe in each of the classrooms we provide them with their face coverings or face shields as appropriate and requested as you already know there's hand sanitizer in every classroom cleaning solutions provided for the daily spot cleaning of the high traffic areas those classrooms are sanitized daily we as already mentioned we have a coveted team of custodians to assist us in those higher needed areas and then there's a deep cleaning every third day at a minimum and then we also follow the district health protocols and reporting and returning to work which i spoke about earlier and notification of positive contacts and then as we return to work and the support that the district's offering we have employee assistance program and then regular communication with those vulnerable staff you know we'll reach out to them talk to them find out how they're doing and and do just basic check-ins there's training for the use of the online platforms and the supplemental resources and then instructional technology support dedicated to virtual learning mr mcintosh i know that yes sir i know that the eap is in place and that's a substantial benefit to our employees but we also have teachers and staff who are in the building now and who will be in the building as we move to full time in person who are concerned about their own anxiety and their own level of stress related to this pandemic will we have personnel available and alerted to checking in with those folks as as time permits well i think that's a really good point you know we have social workers at all of the elementaries in the junior highs and then the mental health counselors at the at the high school there's also you know the administrator or a relationships that get built on each campus to help those individuals who may be experiencing a rather higher level of anxiety and i can understand that as we report back so i think it just goes back to the communication within either the administration administrator or if it's bigger than that than those social workers mental health counselors are there to kind of help and guide them to other places but eap you know is you get 10 session 10 sessions for free for every employee so and they're the real counselors to assist and give the employees the tools to put in their tool belt to kind of lower their anxiety and come in to work each day absolutely and thank you for that i just want us to to be mindful of the fact that we have employees at every level who who may be experiencing a level of stress and anxiety that we don't really know about correct thank you mr mcintosh next miss bets good evening president santa cruz governing board members dr mccord i wanted to start with the transportation update as we can't start school without getting our kids there so just the fleet is in better shape than it's ever been so we have been taking advantage of the lung the long break in addition as you know we did implement the new routing software versatrans this last spring and so all of the regular education routes are totally completed have been verified all the drivers have driven the routes have substantiated their times one of the issues we had last year was with our software the the software indicated a time that were often as much as 30 minutes off which caused some of the delays and issues at the beginning of the school year last year so we believe that as far as our regular education buses go we're in good shape we did we did reinstate the wrist the wristband program for our kindergarten students so each bus we are affectionately giving a package of those colored laminated cards to every bus so that let's use greenfield elementary as the example they have the greatest number of buses so they have seven buses so each bus will have its own color and each kindergarten teacher will be given the appropriate yellow green blue purple red wristband to put on to the kindergarten student so that in the afternoon when they're going home they're able to match up the color that's shown in the bus window to the wristband on their wrist those have been all trans been transmitted to all of our elementary schools as well as the school classroom list given to to the entire school not just kindergarten but indicating what bus every student is on in the entire school so that has already occurred in addition at the junior high and the high schools they don't worry so much about kindergarten students and wristbands but they would like to know what the approximate lineup would be for the buses so that they know which students are on which bus that's going to come in first second third fourth etc and so those bus lineups have been sent out to our secondary schools as well assigned seating this has had come up recently that we really need to make sure that we're understanding who's on our buses and who and where they are sitting in the event of an outbreak where we're able to do some contact tracing so again it's difficult the first couple of weeks we're not in a steady state especially the first couple of weeks this year as only half of our students will be riding the bus on any one day so under those circumstances we're going to wait probably until the end of september and actually starting at the very beginning we're actually having the bus drivers indicate to all the students hey find a seat and then if you like that seat stay there for the next you know couple of months because we are going to assign you to a seat uh when when the appropriate time is and basically the driver will just send a seating assignment back and have the students write down their names at every grade level so in addition to that we wanted to make sure that we had some visibility as to which students are actually riding our bus so we have not been able to send it out today but it's ready to go tomorrow so we're sending out the registration form tomorrow asking our families first of all do you plan on using gilbert public schools busing services if the answer is no then they're done if they say yes and we're actually asking them is it occasionally or regularly this will just give us some more information on in the event of an outbreak how we can match up the student to the bus route that they're on in addition we did verify of course all of our buses do have cameras on them and we keep video and the video is kept anywhere between three weeks to a month and so in the event of an outbreak and we don't know for certain who the student was sitting next to were able to pull that video and be able to verify that fairly quickly the special education routes ongoing again this is a complexity that i learned about last year the issue that as special education students arrive and depending upon where they live they could impact the pickup and drop off times for every single student on that route that's already been routed requiring us to contact all the parents over and over again as their schedules change because we're adding students to routes this year with the assistance of the special education department we received every single student that had an iep that had an iep mandate of specialized transportation by the 15th or 20th of may so we've been active actively getting them all routed what happened then though is at the end of june and early july we had some significant upturns in covid 19 cases throughout the county and at that point in time many of our students with transportation and iep needs disenrolled from our neighborhood schools and enrolled in global academy so when that happened many of these students their transportation was deleted they're now online so theoretically they don't need transportation to go to school online so at this point in time the last couple of weeks we've been working very closely with the special education department identifying all those students with that need did they move back into a bricks and mortar so that we can get them routed as quickly as possible so right now we think that we've got everybody routed to the tune of maybe maybe as many as 30 to 40 individuals have not yet been routed which is much much better than in prior years so we feel like we're in pretty good shape there as well and then finally if you remember we did have a great deal of phone calls last year we believe that all these efforts that we've made will contribute greatly to the number of phone phone and emails coming in the first day of school but we do know that we're expecting those it's always difficult the first week or so of school and so we we have worked with technology services to get set up another phone bank with an additional six phones put into the conference room and areas in transportation so that we can manage all the phone calls so in addition wanted to share again as we've had resignations of other employees we've also seen resignations of our drivers so since august 1st or so we've lost about 12 drivers so we are actively recruiting at this point we have a game plan for tuesday morning to make sure that all of our routes are covered in addition i had been told that chandler public schools was providing some support to queen creek renting out their drivers as they are not yet in session so trace toby our director has been reaching out to local school districts around to find out can we open up a purchase order with mesa or with scottsdale or some of the other neighboring school districts to actually rent to their drivers for a period of a couple of weeks while that school district is not in session but gilbert public schools is so we're still working on those kinds of things as well to mitigate some of that loss the i talked about the video cameras uh implementing the zonar z-pass so we had talked about this last year a couple of times with our with the superintendent's parent council we talked about it um in june about whether that would be a value things were looking pretty good at the end of june and we put that on the shelf however it's deemed now that we really should probably do that so higley unified as an example does not have z-pass they have another system by which they are having the students put their their pass on the bus so that that the the bus knows who's on the bus you know at any point in time so that's what the z-pass will do as well we we have moved forward on implementing that getting all the equipment put on all of our buses hoping to pilot it after fall break with with some of our elementary schools to start in addition we talked about the signage so our special education students starting july 8th july 8th september 8th starting september 8th we'll be going tuesday and then thursday and friday that first week so you can see the four-day sign on the bus there and then the monday thursday sign for those starting the next week and then the tuesday friday sign for those that will start tuesday and their second day will be on friday next week so that that way the students can see oh they're expecting me to be here today or oh they're not expecting me to be here today so all of our buses fortunately will be running their exact same routes every day again they'll just have fewer students on the bus giving them additional practice etc a couple of other additional things the dr mccord brought forward to us last year the idea of putting bus stop signs on our bus stop so those are being deployed tomorrow and thursday so that all of our students and families know where the bus stops are primarily for elementary they most of our elementary junior highs and high school bus stops are the same however it's mostly to support our elementary students so that's my report on transportation okay i can go on great i didn't hear you say the status of the sanitizing gun oh um yes that's in a future slide though dr santa cruz i'm still ahead i'm still ahead of myself okay so this is um this is uh breaking news so the summer meal program we were just notified yesterday that the u.s department of agriculture has extended that through december 31st 2020 and we received notification today from the department of education here in arizona that they've confirmed that and we are to begin providing meals to every single student whether they're free introduced or not as soon as possible we're starting to we'll we're ramping up for that to happen on the 8th of september a couple of things this is breaking news for all of our principals so the good news is all of our students are going to have are going to be fed the potentially difficulty is we might be creating a logistical issue because we'll have that many more students actually in cafeteria lines trying to get meals so however because all the meals are not going to be charged it will facilitate getting them in in and out of the line for purposes of the point of sale system etc so we're actually all very excited about that we will bring back there for all cafeteria workers to make sure that we can have as many lines as possible as our staffing will allow us we too have seen a fair amount of reductions in staff and nutrition services but we're fully advertising for additional cafeteria workers when i was speaking with the director today debbie mccarron she indicated that normally we're feeding about 40 percent of our student population she expects that this could go up to be 80 so the good news is we no longer will need to concern ourselves with not enough reimbursement for the national school lunch program and for our food services program um and then and then we will be able to serve the families throughout gilbert in a very positive way any questions on any of that okay great here comes dr santa cruz i'm waiting with favorite bread so how are we going to let families know about that or what is your plan to i guess maybe that will go out to principles and then they'll let families know how that will work so right now as an example we are still having a curbside pickup of our free introduced at lunch free and reduced lunch families and they're we're still providing that to them between 7 and 9 30 every morning that will continue and as they're coming we'll go ahead and give them a flyer and let them know that this will be continued through the 31st of december in addition anybody that comes to breakfast or lunch tomorrow they will not be charged so it will get out in that way as well but we're launching the flyer and all the communication um thursday friday this week will that be at the secondary level too yes it will be yes so it is amazing i mean that is amazing i have i just have to say it's going to be a huge i mean i think it's going to be very helpful to families during this difficult time and um just really puts us in a different place than we've ever been before so that's really amazing well and just to be clear i've already had some questions about wow then then really our nutrition service department is going to be in trouble because they're not going to have any revenue at all so i want to make sure it's clear that this is usda and these are all fully reimbursable meals so some of the changes that we're going to make are that the a la carte hot hot a la carte foods will not be available to the junior highs and high schools at least initially we're going to get into a steady state and figure out how much how much staff we have to be able to manage that there will be a la carte options however the the free meal will be a packaged meal that will be it'll be hot and cold um and there will be some choice but it will be the com the combination the combo pack that we provide generally for students so nobody will ever have to go with a cheese sandwich right nobody will ever have to go with this cheese sandwich that's exactly right so regarding the cleaning i'm going to start with the trident sprayers um dr santa cruz have they indicated how long that will continue is that indefinitely is it until december 31st that's where they are right now our understanding is there's a great deal of pressure to extend it through the entire fiscal year but we'll just monitor it as we have been it's been changing um every month at least so so um the they're cry they're called the trident sprayers and we have verified this twice i wish i could guarantee for certain that they're going to arrive on the 8th of september but we've verified twice that they're designated for gilbert public schools and there are 50 of them which means that every single school will have one this is a great tool it allows them to go through every classroom fairly quickly to desanitize every night and then in addition the playground it allows the custodian or the building manager to go out to the playground and spray the playground equipment twice a day to making sure that everything is desanitized it does not replace cleaning of course but it will go a long way towards making sure that our surfaces are safe throughout our buildings so every elementary school and junior high will have one and and every high school or junior high that has a weight room will have two so that they can be used in the weight room and then will be used throughout the building so we are expecting them all to come in on on the 8th of september and we will deploy them as soon as we get them in the good news is that we do have the chemical in though so that's ready to go at every single one of our school sites in addition 10 of those sprayers are designated for transportation with the same thing so that every time that they run around they're able to go and when i see a route i mean all three runs high school elementary junior high and they'll be able to go ahead and fog the inside of the bus so that the um so that when the afternoon run is available it's desanitized and then we'll we'll clean it at the end of the day on the buses as well and right now we're managing that we did not anticipate having the trident sprayers in time so we're managing that every single one of our buses has a spray pot bottle of this this qt material and so they are actually using a hand spray bottle to desanitize every time they're doing a special education run a preschool run whatever the case an evit run and they're doing that individually now on our buses as well um i'm happy to say that all of the plexiglas shields are in and have been installed and deployed to all of our schools the every single spray bottle we finally received all the sprayers that we needed to make sure that every classroom was fit with one the hand sanitizer bottles of course have been in for some time we made a commitment it was actually ashland ranch that we used as the model for determining how many dispensers how many hand sanitizers dispensers do we need in our average elementary school in gilbert and so it was at ashland that we determined the locations and we determined that there were 14 that were needed the dispensers were needed there were 14 per elementary so i can say that we are at at least eight for every elementary and they have the product to go with it we have prioritized the elementary schools over the junior highs and high schools just due to the age of the students and the fact that that we want to make sure it's purely visible and so every single school has a minimum of eight as well as the product to fill them as the dispensers are coming in we're going to fill in the 14 to the elementaries and then go to the junior high and high schools again all of the hand sanitizer bottles are fully available and so as they're being ordered by schools we are deploying those as well to all the areas for the junior high and high schools until we can get the other dispensers in so is that the hand sanitizer that's not at every classroom but it's just at spaces around the junior highs and high schools right so yes yes so like in the so marcy actually marcy taylor met with all of the junior high and high schools and determined where do we need them so the locations would have been and we have the bottles to go instead right now until we get the dispensers but the libraries the auditoriums the um the office area the attendance area those types of places have been identified so indicating that probably about eight would be needed for every junior high and high school seven or eight so again as soon as they come in we'll get them out as quickly as possible the good news is we we were having a hard time getting the hand sanitizer it is a foam hand sanitizer again so that it doesn't hopefully makes less of a mess but we do have a fair amount of product of that in right now as well so at least the product is coming in the delivery of clean cloths there are a few outliers and where for some reason we're having a hard time getting them in but generally speaking throughout the school district the class have been delivered and sent us is the company that's operating that and they're the ones who will be doing the laundering and bringing in the new the new clean class once a week at every single school um let's see and then the other thing is the bathroom cleaning machine so one of the things that that albert has talked about from the very beginning is that with these cleaning protocols let's try to get the equipment that we can to facilitate that process with our custodians and our building managers so the cleaning machines we have ordered as well two for every high school one for every junior high in elementary those are were expected in the same time as the trident sprayers we don't have confirmation of that at this point but but just to give you an idea these have been ordered since june so we've been trying to just constantly nudge when they come and when are they coming so we're happy to get the sprayers in this week this coming week so what are we doing until the sprayers come hopefully september 8th if they don't come what's our backup plan same with the bathroom cleaning machines what's the backup plan if those don't show up um so the bathroom cleaning machines all the custodians and the um and the building managers know how to clean a bathroom and so they would do what they've always been doing it's just that the the cleaning machines would help them do it quicker in addition the if we don't get these sprayers in there is an option to again we do have some extra spray spray triggers in now and spray bottles so we have options to be able to deploy those as well and get the chemical in there because it can be as i described with our buses that's what we're doing with our buses so that's an option um we have gotten confirmation though so we're we're we're feeling more positive than we have for a long time regarding these trident sprayers but i will keep you apprised yeah i just think as long as we have a backup plan in case it doesn't because we've we've committed to those those cleaning protocols and want to make sure that we're doing what we can you bet and then as far as the delivery of the cloths if they weren't delivered already you said there's a few outliers are you expecting them tomorrow or the next day i mean yeah so by tuesday for sure we had an issue with one school yesterday those were delivered yesterday so we're good there and then another school came up today and they're supposed to be delivered tomorrow morning yes they're on top of it albert's staying on top of it those are the only two that were outstanding now there's only one left that i know of at least okay thank you so much you bet and then finally performing arts i'd like to give a call out to um karen coleman she's worked very hard to figure out how can we make our instrument safe for our students so there were two products that she found the mighty mist is to sanitize the inside of horns and the super slick is really meant to sanitize the exterior of our wood instruments so the super slick is in and we're able to deploy that out to our our orchestras and probably especially with our clarinets and stuff like that for our band instruments and we're still waiting for the mighty mist to come in in addition she actually went out and hit up um lowe's and home depot for buckets um and then using probably some sort of a material a kitty litter type material so that there's a place that the students can like shake out their trumpets i was worried about that so so that it's not all over the carpet or in the air whatever the case may be there's some valves yeah yes and we have um we also had one student uh that that was sharing a horn and that we have put in an order to get a second horn so that we don't have that sharing going on as well so we are working with a performing arts group as well to come up with strategies sorry those buckets have been needed for years to know that they emptied that out on the carpet and just leave it i didn't want to get into that detail i'm sorry so again i guess just what is the backup for the brass instruments are those for the mighty mist is that for instruments that are shared like if you don't have an answer to that question so i've been a little bit external to that conversation but i will find out and i'll put it in this week's board memo so you're aware yeah any other questions on that oh the final thing before we get into the budget availability so in talking with um john castellano about technology so how are we going to clean our technology our chromebook so um in doing the research it seems that a 70 percent isopro isopropyl alcohol solution works very well for the keyboards and the exterior of the of the chromebooks and other laptops the issue is with the lcd screens and so it needs to be diluted to 50 percent concentration we we did have enough isopropyl alcohol in to deploy them all to our high schools and secondary so they think they can get started having that available to them we're working at getting a 50 solution but we do have enough alcohol where we can at least give them the alcohol and they can dilute it themselves to the 50 level and we're still working on options for our elementary schools so there are products out there there's electronic wipes and there's a 3m wipe that is meant for electronic materials we're looking at seeing how quickly we can procure those so that we can send them out to our elementary schools so that's all i have about um the cleaning are there any other questions so dr santa cruz are you are you good perfect thank you that brings up a question because you're talking about cleaning chromebooks which you know after someone has used it but since everybody has had a chromebook with the online learning how are we i mean we've had that before for junior highs and high schools are the elementary students going to be able to keep their chromebook what is the plan for elementary is it going to become a one-to-one and then they just carry their chromebook with them or what what is the plan for them we would ask that they they hang on to their chromebooks right now as we're using them and then if we're back full and we no longer need to use a buzz platform at the elementary level and and just shift over to uh what we've always done then we will collect them on each campus okay so yeah but they will be they will be we don't have enough to be able to leave one on campus and one at home they would be transporting those back and forth and with elementary kids they might be more at risk could be when i think the cleaning need is primarily due to repairs that have to be made and those kinds of things so as um i think librarians are mostly collecting them and then um they're working with technology services to make sure that they're repaired and cleaned etc so i think that's the biggest need okay thank you so i wanted to talk about the budget availability there's a lot of moving parts to the budget in the current year as you know we are funded on current year funding but we have all these other grants out there and available to us i wanted to talk about that the biggest thing i want to talk about is the enrollment of bricks and mortar versus arizona online so to date we have about 27 800 enrollees in our neighborhood schools and about 5 600 or so and this changes daily so please i'm saying about don't hold me to the exact numbers versus last year our neighborhood enrollment was 33 000 and our online was 125 or 131.

so if we if we um lost less than 650 students we would be somewhere between 98 and 100 but to date this is to date we have lost 900 students so therefore we are planning on revising our budget down that we that we gilbert public schools own so that reduction will be about 2.5 million dollars so we have 200 thousand dollars of karezak money available and that we know we need to reduce our our budget down by two and a half million dollars so we still have 2.3 million dollars to come up with to balance our budget for the current year so is that is that clear okay sorry one more thing so the enrollment stabilization grant is that to get us back to the 98 number so those are those are tied together that's what that's the mechanism of getting to that 98 that's correct okay thank you so um so staff has been looking at so we based upon the student accounts today um you know i had on the slide that we're looking at applying for 30 million dollars of the enrollment stabilization grant and that's relevant to that 27 000 students from 33 000 and the 5 600 students to the 134 so it's all related to all of that so we are going to be applying for about 30 million dollars of that enrollment stabilization grant to get up to your point to get up to that 98 funding of last year's weighted student count so just wanted to make sure that the board was aware of all that and so as part of that as part of the enrollment stabilization grant it is a federal grant and it was identified that we need to find covid related costs associated with that enrollment stabilization grant but they were going to be very open and and flexible about how we did that one of the things they mentioned was revenue losses so that we could if we could show where we had this much money in this particular fund last year and or in 19 and in 20 it decreased substantially we're able to apply for that delta so to date we've identified about five million dollars of revenue loss at the same time we're looking for all those expenditures that we could apply for the 30 million dollar enrollment stabilization grant and that's all very complicated and i'm very sorry but it's it's a little bit of a shell game at this point to try to figure out um where we're going to go from here and that grant by the way the grant application is due friday this week so is there are you confident is that a best case scenario that we could get 30 million or are you confident that or how do you feel about that i mean could we be looking at even a less you know less amount than that which would affect our our budget so i i i believe i believe the governor when he says that we will be funded to no less than 98 of the prior years weighted student count how we're going to get there i don't know so one of the things i think that we did anticipate as a group all of my peers was that we would just be funded to worst case we'd be funded through equalization at the 98 percent of weighted student count but then there was the enrollment stabilization grant funding that was provided from the federal government and so so the state of arizona is using that first and i believe early on the governor identified some of the rainy day funds as being able to hold schools and charter public districts and charter schools harmless so i believe that not sure whether the enrollment stabilization grant will meet the full 30 million dollars but i do believe that we will have the funding in some way shape or form to meet that 98 percent of last year's weighted student count thank you i think that's all i got thanks nice job thank you next don for communication good evening dr dr santa cruz governing board members dr mccord um this is really just a summary of what we've talked about at the previous meetings um right now with regards to communication we're really focusing on back to campus just to reiterate some of what the principles shared today the communications at the campus level have been phenomenal and we've been monitoring from them from districts they've been very impressive communicating with our various stakeholders at this moment is definitely challenging and i greatly appreciate all of the expertise that the campuses have shown um some clear things that we just need to support our families with right now one of which is making sure um ms frost mentioned it is making sure that all of our families have accurate contact information and infinite campus as that feeds into blackboard which is our mass notification system luckily we have just gone through an annual update and all of our campuses have been working really hard within blackboard there is a report that can be generated to show how many emails are incorrect so i looked at our report for all of our campuses today and we are at below 0.4 bad emails which is phenomenal given the number of parents we have in our district so the campuses have been doing a wonderful job of course right now it's really important that we can communicate accurate and up-to-date information with all of our families so we'll be continuing to remind our families of that that if their contact information changes it's really important to get that updated infinite campus as soon as possible we're also constantly reminding our families right now that they should be expecting and looking out for regular communications from district and their campus as all the key information is shared and a lot of that information like has already been mentioned is around educating our families and how they can support their students with regard to expectations for return to campus so for example in our weekly district newsletters to families we're sharing uh what does that daily health assessment look like here's a downloadable pdf also you can view on the website video content about how to go through that daily health assessment video content on five easy steps to washing your hands correctly what families can do to support the efforts to educate their students on best practices for returning to our campuses we also have face covering information including the policy and the protocols prominently posted on the website and we continue to direct our families to that information via emails newsletters and of course uh posts on social media that's all i have i i have a question um what about our families that don't have english as their first language how do they get a translation or what are we doing to address those issues thank you for that it's a really important question i will say that because information is coming out so quickly it has been a real challenge to ensure that all information is translated however we've worked hard to identify key pieces of information to ensure that that is translated so for example the daily health assessment that is on the website is in both english and spanish also we're very lucky with our website so with the new district and school websites that we have it has a built-in google translate feature when we launched the websites we did work to test how good that translation was and it's around 98 accurate so that means that any uh content that is posted on the website not pdfs but the actual content that's on the page families can click that google translate and it will translate so because of that that is another reason as to why when we send out any communications to our family we also post it within the body of the text on the on the web page so that the translate feature is there it's not ideal i have high hopes for improving our translation services going forward okay thank you any other questions okay thank you thank you just to recap um what we've been doing since august 25th until going through this friday uh working on our phase in preparation as you've seen um this evening there's been a ton of preparation going into place we want to do this as well as possible when our students show up on tuesday september 8th we'll be delivering the hybrid model uh assuming the metrics are holding strong from the 8th through the 18th and then planning for a september 21st 5 day a week in person delivery model again hoping that the metrics are there if they're not we will either continue with hybrid or if it goes backwards from there we will have to continue online keeping a positive mindset about this and assuming that our dates will be intact but we also know that things can happen but um we'll talk about the positives moving forward hopefully that we won't have to address those and again we'll just continue with uh communication with our families and discuss the in-person and the online delivery models that we have available for our families that's it thank you for listening to us i know it's a lot of information but i think it's important that you as board members our community understands that we have been doing a lot to prepare for opening up the school again and as you can see from what our principles displayed they are extremely excited and want to do the very best they can for their students their staff and their families thank you dr mccord and just a reiteration they're in lies as we observed and listened to the presentations from all of those individuals who made themselves available this evening therein lies the rationale and the reason for why this wasn't a turnkey operation and why we needed the time to get ready for any kind of reopening and so at least for me and on behalf of my fellow board members i i would just offer a great amount of appreciation and gratitude for the work that's been done with the understanding that nothing is perfect we're doing the best we can and i think this is indicative of that so we thank you dr mccourt and the team and we thank the teachers and staff as they prepare for this eminent opening in whatever form and all of the work you have done will do and will continue to do on behalf of the students and the families of this district board members any additional commentary i'd like to add something also dr santa cruz if i may i really appreciate this i think all of you know that this is something that's i've been very worried about and i'm going to continue to be worried about it just because of everything that's gone on um but the the amount of work and thought that's put into this by all of you all of this staff and everything is is beyond anything that i could even be more grateful for i just i would like to just add something personal um i as you know i spent a lot of time in montana this summer and the city that we were in it used to be a mining town and now it is basically the hospitality industry and as a result of that when they were closed down during that period of time when they reopened in in may one of the things that i noticed everywhere we went was no one wanted to close down again and as a result of that people were working so hard trying to get keep things sanitized keep the social distancing because they what they relied on that job they didn't want to close down again and it was really impressive to see the cooperation in this one community of people wearing their masks cleaning things up socially distancing and i think that's what we can have here in this district and i would encourage all of our principals to have that let's make sure we don't have to close it down again attitude which i think you do and if we can just keep portraying that to our community that if everybody works together and does what we need to do that that is the right thing then you know the sky's the limit i agree thank you for that anyone else i just would like to express my gratitude for you know we have a number of people who presented tonight but we know that behind them are hundreds thousands of people working to make this all work and i would like to thank each of them wish we could do it individually but we're supposed to social distance we won't and just very much looking forward to having students back on the campus tuesday dr sasha i just wanted to add some thank yous i mean i this is this was a hard decision but it's a decision for our entire community we had a lot of people that came came in and spoke and gave their thoughts not one of them were over the age of 60.

and to the republicans i'd like to remind everyone that per governor baker's order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law glc 30a section 20. the public will not be allowed to physically access the school committee meeting members of the public can access the meeting via live stream at the dhs tv media youtube channel in addition the event will be rebroadcast on dc tvs channels 9 and 18 on the following days wednesday and thursday at 5 p.m friday at 6 a.m saturday at 8 am and sunday at 2 p.m the school committee reserves the right to implement additional remote participation procedures and will notify the public of these procedures as soon as practicable uh ms guenther can we have a roll call please chris oliver shannon jenkins here kathleen admiral here mary waite here john nunes yeah just like to let everyone know that mr oliver had work commitments with the opening of schools and kushner and so he was unable to be here this evening um because the meeting is closed to the public we don't have anyone here for public comment but comments are welcome um via email if you have comments you should email those comments to the recording secretary kathleen genther at dartmouthschools.org that's e e k-a-t-h-l-e-e-n g e n t h n e r at dartmouth schools dot org um all of the emails will be entered into the public record um when the tell when the me the minutes are approved at our next meeting also all of those emails will be forwarded to every school committee member we do see all of your emails and we do appreciate them and we appreciate kate taking the time to send all of those to us at this time i'm going to move to the approval of the minutes we have regular and executive session minutes for august 18th and regular and exec executive session minutes for august 24th let's take the regular session minutes together so i'll seek a motion for approval of the regular session minutes for august 18th and august 24th so it moved a second all right so i have a motion by mr nunes in a second by mrs amaral any further discussion um hearing none i assume we still have to do a roll call yes since we don't have the public here no we're good we're open somewhere we're okay all right done all in favor cause we're not zooming out okay um anyone opposed so that's four zero in favor um next we'll entertain a motion to approve the executive session minutes um we can take them together for august 18th and august 24th so move madam chair with the stipulation that they be held until the matter for which they were intended is complete can i have a second second all right so i have a motion by mr nunes and a second by mrs amaral any further discussion i'm hearing none all in favor aye opposed all right so those pass unanimously as well um so we are going to take um one order of new business out of order first on our agenda because i believe we have mr chris of fully live already and we don't want to keep him waiting um so dr gifford do you want to do a little introduction first and then we'll hear from him yes thank you madam chair um i would like to introduce andrew christophule who is our uh a.d this year i just want to start the conversation by saying mr kylie and i along with uh principal tebow have had numerous conversations with andrew about the proposition that we have on the table to vote to approve athletics at the dartmouth public schools as you might know any schools that are voting to start their schools in remote model need to have a school committee vote to approve athletics at the in the district and i know andrew's going to have a great presentation to see what kind of guidance that we'll be adhering to and how we're going to keep our kids safe and at the end of that i would like a vote because the season will be moving along and they are working very hard on creating pods and and and competition so with that um mr chris of fully you can go ahead and get started now andrew i don't know if you can hear us can you let him know jonathan that he can get started yep he might go good evening folks i appreciate um you know dr gifford allowing me to present in this format and um the family issue going on was very difficult for me to get back up to dartmouth tonight and uh mr peratti and mr galicia for working the uh the optics for allowing this to happen so i appreciate the opportunity to speak in front of you this evening it is about our athletic program i am sure that throughout the summer months there was much information that was shared by the state of massachusetts the department of public health deci the eea and and the miaa about status on fall sports and one of the pieces of guidance that that came out was if a school department was to begin the year remote we would need uh superintendent's approval to be able to move forward with an athletic program offering to our students so i put together a slideshow that i feel will be very informative and offer um all of you uh a lot of information um and and sharing my feelings and thoughts of uh where we stand and where i i i believe we should proceed so i'm gonna share my screen i think i already have okay all right can everyone see yes okay so the summer dialogue and decision making um and again as i mentioned earlier there was a lot of um there's a lot of meetings a lot of discussion a lot of moving parts over the summer time they're basically aligned with all of the moving parts of the academic piece of returning to school so the four main decision-making bodies that were involved um with what sports are cleared to play the restrictions and guidelines that we must follow the seasons and the dates and the seasonal sport offerings the four main bodies was that what desi the dph uh eea which is the executive office of energy and environmental affairs and the iaa now in a traditional year and and i think we'd all agree that this is certainly not traditional we would have a three season model uh the model would be season one which would be fall which would be august to november you would have the winter season which would be december to february kind of branching into march and then you would have the spring season for march and concluding in june so the fall sport offerings traditionally are your golf field hockey football boys and girls soccer boys and girls cross country unified basketball and volleyball for the winter would be boys and girls basketball boys and girls ice hockey boys and girls indoor track and cheerleading and competitive cheerleading i'm sorry i forgot to put competitive chilean also in the fall and uh in the spring would you be your baseball softball boys and girls outdoor track unified track sailing boys and girls lacrosse and boys and girls tennis now uh throughout the summer months um guidelines came out there are certain sports that are uh at the higher risk category that we offer in the fall and so there was a lot of meetings over the summer time to see exactly what we would do um with those sports if we could not play them in their traditional seasons and we certainly had all students and athletes in the front of our minds when creating this plan um and again it offers a little bit of flexibility although it's not the the best of situations but we have to make the best of it so the recommendation um due to the desi eea and mia restrictions and guidelines was to move to a fourth season model now again the miaa which was comprised of a covet task force approved and recommended this four season model now in this slide there is a lot going on and i'll do my best to explain so in the green are your lower risk sports deemed by the eea you have your moderate risk sports which are in yellow which is eea standards and then your high risk that are in red so with this four season model what basically happened and what they did was they created an extra season um and they try to quote unquote wedge it in in between the winter season ending and the and the spring season beginning and um what that allowed was the opportunity for the three higher risk false sports to have a landing spot now again it is not an ideal situation because when i share with you what the dates are it is there are some problems and it can be problematic but again we have to make the best of a tough situation so in this fall the sports that would be cleared for competition would be golf field hockey boys and girls soccer boys and girls cross country and volleyball in the winter and again this is going to be visited season by season and as you know uh a lot of the restrictions and recommendations do change quite often and it is of my hope and and i know everyone else's hope that again as the year progresses the uh situation uh with covet 19 and and people's health uh improves and so um those would be the fall sports in which we would have the ability to offer competitively in the winter time you would have your basketball your ice hockey your your indoor track and your cheer now again three of those four offerings are still in the higher risk category so we could get to the month of november into december and if they still are at higher risk uh there'll be additional conversations that take place about the offering of those sports in those respective seasons so the fall two season uh actually let me rewind a moment uh the fall the traditional fall would start um friday the 16th i believe it is 18th i'm set and it would last or until mid-november and then winter would start at the end of november and run to april vacation i'm sorry uh february vacation the fall would starts fall two would start at the end of february and run until april vacation and the spring would pick up after april vacation and run through the month of june so um the standard that we are going to attempt to uh to reach is anywhere between an 8 and a 12 game season now it has already been determined in the fall that we are not going to have state tournaments so that we'll be offering some flexibility towards the end of the season uh in which we will be able to fit in a few more competitions where in traditional seasons we would have to end the season and then if you were not tournament bound your season would end and you wouldn't get those extra games so it does offer a little bit of flexibility the winter the fall two and the spring as far as state tournaments go will be determined as we get closer one of the things that the um the state did not want to do and i can understand why is they do not want to make a decision in august that a spring state tournament is cancelled so they are going to take it as uh the years progress and and kind of take a temperature check as to where we're at um with the health and well-being of our of our society so that is the four season model that they have shared and recommended now the school-based decisions that we will need to make and again the decisions that dartmouth public schools make can be very different than some of our surrounding communities because each and every community and public school have have their own challenges uh so the first one is can our school honor the safety precautions and guidelines that are set is the best option to move false sports to fall too so one thing that i apologize and did not mention in the previous screen was again with fall two you do have the option to moving those false sports to the fall two season which again as we progress i'll explain to you that i believe that is very problematic um but again that's a decision that the school would have to make um who are we going to play i'm sure that you've seen in the newspapers that some schools and some leagues have decided that uh they're not going to move forward with a fall athletic experience um and they have their their reasons and as i mentioned every school department has their own challenges um and they they have the autonomy to make those decisions so again who are we going to play who was left to play who was available to play again those are decisions that we'd have to make are we willing to compete with the fo while following the new sport rules and guidelines now again this is a big piece now the sport rules and guidelines that have been set um were put in place for the health safety and well-being of our student athletes to be able to participate uh again i i caution everyone that you know some of the sports um guidelines um will will you know will be a a very big uh transition from what coaches and student athletes are are used to playing how they used to be playing but again that's a decision that we would have to make and then what is our transportation situation um and again transportation um is uh you know from the very beginning i know from the academic stand standpoint the athletic standpoint uh transportation is definitely a key piece um now the overarching focus in all of our decision making is what is in the best interest of our students health safety and well-being physically socially and emotionally so that has to be in the forefront of our minds when we're making these decisions so the dph guidelines and again this is something that um i know has been shared talked about but i just want to touch upon um you know and how it would affect the athletic realm if student athletes and coaches have any symptoms uh of covid19 they they're not allowed to attend practices and games and they follow up with the guideline the guidance for isolation and testing and number two student athletes and coaches who are diagnosed with test positive for covert 19 infection um will follow the established protocols and then third student athletes and coaches who were exposed to someone who tested positive cover 19 uh will not be able to participate in practices and games until their 14-day quarantine is complete and this is where the communication comes in where the athletic department um would be responsible to contact the appropriate parties that were involved in those competitions games uh to inform them so um again with the eea and the mia cova task force guidelines you know i went through them there's a lot of common pieces there are some differences depending on the sports but compile this listing of some the common precautions first one would be a pre-workout pre-tip contest screening now this would be um you know we did this in in uh strength and conditioning in which the students had came in they checked in they signed in they answered questions uh based on how they felt physically and then again without having any symptoms that was their pre-screening they were allowed to uh participate and again we would have um something very similar in place from from the athletic realm there's a multiple layered face covering all right that will be required for on the field the bus and the bench areas now again it is very detailed in the protocols and procedures that we're going to have to follow but the multiple layer face covering is something that is recommended they did they did mention the the gators um but the preference would be the multiple layer face coverings social distancing as much as possible which again i think that's a common theme amongst all of us right now in education uh pod practices and and and let me just mention this is for practices only uh is encouraged that the same five to ten kids work together in drills so if i am in a soccer practice um i should be in a group of five or ten of my uh peers and and teammates and working out together in drills that certainly doesn't mean that those pods need to stay that stay throughout the entire practice because i'm sure that they could be um you know under the restrictions they can be a little bit of scrimmaging um but again it's very important that they work in pods as much as they possibly can because it helps with the tracking in the case that we we had to implement that so no benches for practices and the reason for that is personal items should be distanced what i have found is if you do have benches it is a place in which students would congregate and again remembering that 15 to 18 year old students and they are meant to be together and and socialize so if you know the bench can be problematic if if you don't um you know tend to it so for practices only there'd be no benches for games and competitions obviously we would have them um and practicing safe social distancing and their personal items would have to be six feet away from the next person's items um again so there isn't any congregating so the next three i highlighted in yellow because we're going to um in just a moment talk about a student athlete bag and i'll explain what that is but in this particular student-athlete bag the participants are going to need to provide their own water there will not be any water filling stations so they will have to bring their own beverage participants will provide their own hand sanitizer and participants would provide their own disinfectant wipes and this would be in a bag and this is what the recommendation is now if you get to the sanitation the sanitizing disinfectant wipes that would be for instances where you're wiping down some of your own personal equipment if you did have to use the restroom facilities you do have those wipes with you that you can use and so on and so forth so again those are three things that we would ask to provide in the student athlete bag they would be covered staffing at the games um probably more i mean all of us would be responsible for the staffing of it but there would be one particular person that would be the the point person or go-to person um and at that point we would ask you know our own coaches and opposing coaches to bring updated rosters and contact information for the purpose of tracing if we were to have a situation where there was a positive covet 19 participant and for the tracing purposes it's important to know who is there uh and that's not only student athletes but that's also coaches and that person would assist the athletic trainer with game day issues um having um you know a certain area uh that we could set up a small tent that uh if anyone is feeling any type of symptoms of covet 19 that is an area in which we would uh transport the individual and the final one is maxim a maximum of in a transportation traveling party and that would include the coaches and staff um and again that number is smaller than what we're traditionally used to but in order to socially distance them appropriately they would have to mask the windows open and making sure that we're aligned with all of those guidelines so in order to move forward i think there's four keys first one is communication second is transparency third is responsibility or i should say personal responsibility and the final one for all parties is a buy-in all right without those four um you know it would be difficult to move forward now in some of the the conversations that i've had there is definitely a great appetite to move forward so i think the buy-in portion of that would fall into place just nicely okay now again establishing stakeholders roles and responsibilities when you get to communication and you get the transparency there these stakeholders are going to be the people that make this successful and that would be your student athletes your families and your coaches and athletic staff the athletic staff i would put for coaches myself athletic trainer uh game day staff um and so on and so forth so uh there's this three different groupings so what i would like to do and i should say like to do what we will do is conduct sport-specific virtual meetings to address pre-workout and pre-contest screening the importance of communication so that if an individual is home for a day because they have saw they have some symptoms or they're not feeling well that communication is extremely important we have safety guidelines that everyone needs to be aware of for buy-in responsibilities and transparency again same uh sports specific rules of play and again this is going to be a big one but in order for us to safely offer sports competitively we will need to align with all of the rules of play your student athlete bag as i mentioned you have your hand sanitizer you have your disinfectant wipes you have um multiple masks so uh what my recommendation is going to be is students have multiple masks in their bag i haven't decided on a concrete number yet but those masks have to be with them they have to be cleaned on and washed on a normal basis you have your sanitizing of equipment student athletes and families will be responsible to sanitize their own personal belongings that is a key element to keeping people safe you have your transportation rules you have your user fee now the user fee that we charge is 50 per season that when final rosters are created we will um reach out for the payment of the user fee now that user fee will is going to service whether we play for four weeks or eight weeks it's a fifty dollar fee okay and the final one is a sports physical now um over the summer time we were waiting patiently to see if the department of public health was going to change some of the guidelines with the longevity of an active physical but they stayed pat at 13 months so now we begin the process of trying to encourage people within the last week to turn in those sports physicals that they may have um and if they don't have a current one um you know encourage them to go to the doctor and we also gave um a few different um a few different options of whether they're walk-ins um or some of the the local um medical um associations so but that would be the for sports physicals for the coaches and athletic staff again me individual sport meetings so instead of having a larger meeting with all sports represented these would be individualized meetings with individualized sport coaches going over the rules guidelines and expectations because the coaches will have a huge role in the implementation of this plan distinguishing safety rules and responsibilities so everyone knows what is expected of them going over your sport rule modifications not only for them to know but also for them to adjust their practices and the way they teach certain things so again i'll use an example for for soccer um there are no throw-ins um again that changes a little bit with the strategy uh and that's one of many examples in the sport of soccer that will change um they'll be responsible for the sanitation of sanitizing the equipment and the last piece is it will be required of all coaches to take the nfhs which is the national high school federation sports covert 19 online course okay now additional communication outside of the individualized sport meetings uh with student athletes parents and the separate one with coaches um we will put out and publish our next newsletter which is between the lines which again we started at the very end of july and i'll put together a video that will will highlight all of the topics that were discussed just i i feel as though again attacking it from three different angles will give us a better opportunity give us a better opportunity to be able to really communicate and be transparent about what our expectations are and what the roles and responsibilities of individuals is now additional specific safety precautions now the first one is no locker rooms now while being remote um you know student athletes must arrive with and in their gear for practice or games this could be revisited when we shift to a hybrid model um again those conversations will uh take i mean those conversations have taken place already but the formal i will finalize the plane moving forward on when that situation happens and the second bullet which again is uh i think is extremely crucial it certainly will not be popular but no fans in attendance because i believe that all of our attention energy and resources must be laser focused i stole mr tebow's laser-focused idea on participants safety and well-being we are going to have so much responsibility on the field for all the rules and regulations that we must implement that all of our attention to keep our students our coaches and our staff safe needs to be on the playing field okay so how we will adapt we are going to uh we are going to stream varsity games now uh this conversation has been ongoing with mr peratti for probably about a month and a half now um as far if we were to get to a situation where uh streaming of games would be um something that we would definitely have to do we we started those conversations uh probably in mid mid mid july um and there are some there are some opportunities um certainly it's going to meet with you know some challenges we'll be met with um but you know whether it's facebook live using youtube or i reached out yesterday to dc tv and and to see what their availability could and would be and to see if there was an appetite for that so again that is something that continues to be a work in progress the last two would be a sign off for the rules guidelines of the responsibilities that student athletes and families have and a sign off for what our athletic staff responsibilities are all right so again everything would be transparent and there would be accountability to that so additional work to be done um i'm certainly not going to mislead there is a lot to do um if we were to get clearance um i'm proud to say that mostly if not everything has been um planned and discussed and talked about for months now so i feel very confident that we would be able to hit the ground running right away some of these things have already been put in place while others um will need to uh get started tomorrow and thursday especially when it gets down to the league expectations and i'll mention that in a moment but your registrations and your sports physicals uh family id has has been open um for a while now at the beginning of august and there have been registrations for a variety of different sport offerings um now our numbers are a little bit lower than what they traditionally are at this point um but again with with without knowing what we would be able to move forward with i would equate lower numbers to that fact sports physicals as i mentioned um you know after the communication was sent out earlier uh we we have been um sent quite a few sports physicals over the last few days uh to our athletic secretary dolores concelletti and she's done a great job of them putting them into our system there'll be the user fee collection as i mentioned the the collections would take place once we are um once we have our rosters finalized the third one is sport level offered offerings um you know again without knowing what our numbers are and truthfully without knowing what other schools are going to be in play to be able to compete against and what levels they will offer that decision has not been made yet uh next bullet would be finalizing sec which is your southeast conference at the conference that we're in league expectations um your game day protocol so what i mean by that is specific gates that student athletes would enter and exit from again depending on how the schedule would work you could see both your varsity and sub varsity games if time allows because on the back end we worry about triple e but to try to get your varsity and your jv games played in the stadium because it's a lot more manageable of a facility but again that certainly has not been decided or determined and unfortunately we uh there's a lot of other value variables in play that we don't have control over so at this point we're going to have that's going to be a waiting game um participating expectations league rules and proposals again um whether they're roster limits um you know there's a lot of discussion that's going to happen we actually have a league meeting tomorrow once again i know what the result of our situation tonight here is we have to create our game schedules um again one of the one of the challenges we have with game schedules and i'll be very upfront and honest with you we are in a league of five brockton new bedford durfee us and bridgewater raynham brockton is not competing this fall because they are a school district in the city that is in the red so they cannot compete so now we're down to four there are three main conferences in our district uh district is district 8.

okay it's on like none of my calendars none of my calendars talk to each other so september 14th 14th at 6 30. i've got to come in from boston that afternoon so i may be depending on traffic okay but i will be here eventually okay one of the one of the few bonuses of covet is it seems to have reduced some traffic coming in and out of boston so may the traffic gods be with you mr news yes i hope so too um all right so if there's no other business i will entertain a motion to adjourn into executive session for the purposes of providing an update with respect to collective bargaining with union personnel not to return to open session madam chair can we also add non-union personnel to that correct yes we may i will take that as an amendment are you making that motion mr nunes yes i am okay do i have a second second okay so i have a motion by mr nunes a second by miss wait miss gentler can we have a roll call please shannon jenkins yes yes thank you everyone this meeting is adjourned into executive session you

oh this depend window me all right three minute warning so hmm so um okay one more minute [Music] okay so now seven o'clock [Music] everybody here yep okay so what i'll go ahead uh seven o'clock we'll call the open session open we're gonna do the flag salute hand over your heart i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay next we go to roll call uh board member yolanda just raise your hand okay uh let me get my people back up here i jumped uh board member grier here board member sheila nina here and board member arianis present and i am also present so that makes that and we'll go to c approval of the agenda 4.1 approval of the agenda we have a motion on the floor i move the motion to approve second okay motion by board member ariana seconded by board member greer any discussion i'm having problems this time so second regular board bending open agenda i'm gonna have to log out and lock back in so we're gonna do a hand vote for this part so everybody in favor all righty so it is 5-0 and we'll go ahead and move on to item 5.0 recognitions and awards 5.1 recognition of the canyon city foundation and dr dana mitchell your floor good evening tonight we welcome the candy the canyon city foundation board members in recognition of their generous support and partnership with azusa unified school district the canyon city foundation has been a long-standing supporter of the students and the families in the azusa unified school district and since 2005 the foundation has granted over 1.4 million dollars to local organizations in support of social welfare education and the arts and tonight we wish to recognize and wholeheartedly thank the canyon city foundation for their generous grant of thirty five thousand dollars to support and ensure that all of our students in azusa unified have access to the internet in order to participate in a distance learning environment and certainly um covert 19 uh happened and none of us anticipated um the ramifications of this pandemic and part of this um has been beginning our school year in a in a fully distanced learning environment until it is safe to return to our school buildings and part of this is making sure that all students are able to access the internet and so this generous generous grant is enabling us to help those families who need need the internet whether that's wired support through some of our service providers or some cases it is a hot spot for some families as well and so we want to ex just express our gratitude um for this generous generous donation um the gratitude that the foundation um that we have for the foundation and the support that um that they're providing our students and our families in um just a very very difficult time for for so many so tonight um we would like to welcome uh the canyon city foundation board members we have mark ramirez marilyn grinsdale mercedes castro james ramirez and dr barbara dickerson so i'd like to turn it back over to uh to our board president um i would like to thank all of you for what you've done it was such was such a generous donation and in these times i can't say more um any other board members like to speak uh yes um i like to thank the kind of issue for the internet hot like dana says that you know what we didn't expect to be in this day and time but we really i really appreciate that to help the students with their chromebooks and to continue their education you know rather rather it's at home or it's at their body at school and and this is going to make a big difference and thank you very very much yes i would like to take this opportunity to thank the canyon city foundation for their generous donation to the to the students because in reality it goes to the students and you know at this time right now where students are having to go to the library starbucks you know outside starbucks outside a library or you know any place where they can find wi-fi to be able to log into their into their classrooms um it's it's a very well appreciated donation for them so thank you thank you from the bottom of my heart our hearts thank you and i would just echo what was already said um um i think i think we as a district are very appreciative and especially our students who are actually benefited will be benefiting for the from this generous grant i did want to ask i is someone from the foundation going to speak i saw marx look at the camera second and okay okay thank you yeah i'll just just just add a man just such a thank you uh to this um because of this generous gift i mean there will be students there will be families who have access that wouldn't have otherwise had access um and so just just thank you so much for um just another opportunity another another way that that the kenyan city partners with the community and and also with the school district so thank you so much and camden city foundation would any of the members like to speak i thought i saw mr ramirez's hand can you hear me yes okay yes uh i'd like to uh you know thank you all for the recognition on on this um on the com on the award that we gave the the school and we're we at the foundation understand the importance of the kids and this pandemic has caught so many people off guard and so we're happy to be able to uh help as much as we could and look forward to these kids being able to do their work and continue the progress with the zoo unified so again on behalf of the foundation i thank you for the recognition and and i hope that this helps a long way thank you oh any other members would like to speak okay well thank you so very much like i said before and um i forgot to announce that this uh broadcast is also in spanish and if you would like there's an interpretation button down at the bottom and if you press on it it will interpret for spanish for you so and if anybody wants to translate that into spanish so why because i couldn't say it okay uh item 6.1 this is an opera um items from the floor public comments on agenda or non-agenda items item 6.1 this is an opportunity for the public to address the board on agenda or non-agenda items no action can be taken on non-agenda items individual speakers may be allowed up to three minutes to address the board on any agenda or non-agenda items to address the board please raise your hand while in the zoom attendance so if anybody out there would like to speak just raise your hand looks like we're there's nobody here who wants to speak that's perfectly fine we'll go ahead and we'll move on to the next one 7.1 comments and requests by the board uh board member yolanda something you know um thanking the kenyan city foundation you know it was kind of sad because today i read that these two little girls in salinas they actually were sitting outside of a taco bell doing their homework or in school and they came out and saw them and they were actually sitting outside because they were using their chromebooks using the internet and i'm so proud that our district and in our community are getting together our students are not doing that and um sorry that was emotional um i want to hope i i just want to hope that everyone had a great week their first week of school for students and staff and i'm sure it was hectic i know this is all new to all of us but i just want to thank them for working with them you know continue to burn education and work um being sure that we uh we're uh we the kids have the wrong chromebooks the right internet you know their teachers are are working very hard i know the quad employees are working very hard the uh um food service services working very hard and i and parents also so i just think you know i just hope everyone's okay and if not there is a number i'm sure you could call the district office said anyone since this car district office thank you hey uh thank you for yolanda board member greer good evening everyone first um i would like to to formally welcome uh latasha jamal uh to to the team grateful um to to have you here i know that you you've officially started last week um and so grateful grateful that you're on on board and um and and to our arturo i'll say congratulations that you have your dream team fully intact now um and so look forward to uh the work that gets done but but uh latasha welcome to um ausd um on the heels of that i will also say that today is september 1st and several months back we talked about um the need to have a five a five you know develop a five year plan and engage in the community and engaging parents and teachers and all kinds of different categories uh students categories of stakeholders and for obvious reasons we have postponed we have um kind of kind of pushed that deadline back which was originally scheduled for september 15th september is here and it would have been a wild number of months you know these past few months to try to hold those necessary meetings and have those conversations and get that input so again understand why we didn't but um especially now you know excited that we have the full dream team uh in intact um definitely looking forward to to to sharing out and having some conversations on some updates uh um around this item and when we can um you know we begin to have some meetings scheduled uh when we can have some timelines and and what that looks like and so i do know that uh uh mr well you you're been brought up to speed on some of this and i know that you're you're already aware and so i know that i and i know i'm not alone i'm definitely looking forward to um to us moving that forward um and then the only other thing i have is just a a welcome back to everyone um yes you know in one hand welcome back to school but on the other hand welcome to something very new and different um for for all of us um i'll just share just a couple anecdotes um i actually had uh that first week of school um two two phone calls that that really stuck out to me one was from a teacher um there were actually a i got a call from several teachers but but there was a teacher who called and i spoke with her and she was actually in tears and she talked about just some of the challenges and some of the difficulty she said her camera she couldn't get her camera to work and her camera turned off and she was trying to engage her students but the camera wasn't wasn't working um and and that was challenging and and even hearing her even though she was was upset and she was was distraught how she still did her absolute best to to make the most of it and to adapt and to pivot um and and i know that that there are so many of our you know staff whether it's teachers classified you know everything across managers everything across the board where they're needing to make some of those adaptations and so um we know and we recognize that that it's challenging i think that we see now on the third week that it's even getting smooth you know that much more smoother as we get more days kind of under our belt if you will and then um another another story that i had was um from a parent um i spoke to a parent and she actually called and she said do you hear that and i said um i just heard like some some you know almost sound like wailing in the background as you said that's my that's my five-year-old son um and he's crying because of because of the difficulty that he's having um being you know with distance learning and the challenges and he was upset and she was crying and she was upset and and and it was hard you know and i and i heard that so grateful that the already by the second week heard back from this parent and she said that so many things have improved that there were there were just adjustments that things were you know uh pivots and things were made and that her son is doing so much much better and i reminded her that um there are there are likely going to be other moments or other times and situations where things maybe don't go the way that we hope or the way that we plan but glad to see that we're you know things are moving in that direction and so all that to say um again yes welcome back to school um you know welcome to you know school and fall of 2020 for for so many you know across across our country um but for especially for those here in our community we know that it's hard um pl please continue to to reach out and communicate um to you know to staff i'm grateful for those who communicated to me i know other board members have been reached out to us as well um for for different areas and concerns and i just want to like we really are all in this together um as cliche as that sounds this is new for for um for all of us um but i'm grateful for the progress that has been been made and and i'm proud of our district despite all of its the the challenges and the obstacles that we face um that that we're we're facing ahead on um and continuing to you know do what we can to make sure that is as strong and robust of a year um as possible so just want to remind everybody to have grace for yourself patience for yourself also for your teachers for your students for uh other secretaries and staff across the board um and and we'll you know we'll get there thank you board member greater board member sheila thank you good evening and welcome back to the new school year um in our wonderful distance learning that was sarcasm if you didn't catch that um but no seriously i think um i've been appreciative of um the the um the transition that we've seen i i i really just i really just want to echo i think adrian summarized it very very well so i just i really agree with everything that he just said so i'll just i'll just leave it at that um i do have one request um i know that the the 10 day attendance is coming up soon so is that something that we're going to get an update about um once it's available because i really am in curious interested to understand what our enrollment looks like i saw an ali times article about how the enrollment in l unified has dropped tremendously especially at the kinder level so i'm very curious to see what that looks like for us i'm additionally very curious around looking at um how many students how many families are opting for the virtual academy versus distance learning so um i think you know i look for i mean that's my request so um i look forward to seeing that data and i hope i i am optimistic that we're going to be able to have some some students at least back in schools at some point um in the near future but that could just be me thank you thank you board member sridlane uh board member arianis welcome back everybody this year to uh 20 2020 2021 we are all working out with my four kids i can only imagine uh with anyone having one child i mean i have four and it's crazy trying to work trying to get them online trying to get them to pay attention i have a first grader so um i'm really really excited for this school year uh it's definitely different than the distance learning that we had in the spring i i do notice a difference and i want to thank everyone from the district administration to classified to the teachers and even though we're all like slowly climbing up and trying to figure out the glitches even though we get keep getting kicked off the you know google classroom and jump right back in and everything um it's it's working um as best as it can and teachers are very responsive i i really and so is um the staff at the district where i know that a lot of uh families have called and have asked for chromebooks like last minute people that have moved into our district and staff has accommodated and scheduled them and delivered so thank you so much for for doing that i i want to take this time to congratulate assistant principal adrian acosta for attending the western justice center's abcs of conflict training and how important this is um to to our district for someone to get trained because then that way he'll train someone else and other students and just just to know that we are in the right uh in the right road to this um it just it makes my heart really happy because i think it's so important you know to to learn the emotional intelligence and to be able to resolve conflict you know such as um and imply implicit bias bullying inner group conflict and how we can use restorative justice practices in the classroom you know where teachers just individuals is so important when we learn and are able to teach others the tools that are necessary to resolve issues in a positive way we get positive results that are promising and uplifting so congratulations i hope we continue to um to be able to to send more people and they can come back and teach others here and that trickles down too because everything that we do as adults starting with the board trickles down to our students so i i truly appreciate that um and that's pretty much all that i have to say and welcome back everybody and we're ready to rock and roll thank you thank you board member arianes and i'd like to piggyback on what everybody else said welcome back this is a new new year new things to learn and as long as everybody keeps that we're all learning new things and have the patience that we hope other people give us when we're learning new things then this will this will be it'll work its way out but um i'd also like to think staff um there have been several times that i've had parents that have been just it with in not knowing what to do and i just bam bam gave him an email or processed their forwarded their email to staff and i'm getting back thank you so much it was immediately handled things are taken care of and they're very happy so um also the kenyan city foundation thank you so very much again because that was such a wonderful gift to us and ms jamal welcome to our the dream team welcome to the dream team all righty and that's about it um so we will move on actually uh president bible's vocal can yes i know already went but just there's no one more person i just got to say thank you to before before i move on and it's dr dana mitchell just thank thank you so much uh you know again going back to that first that first week there were so many just issues or scenarios or situations and there were times where you and i were texting and messaging back and forth pretty pretty late you know beyond you know working hours and you were still working hard um just you know just taking care of business so so thank you so much for that i'd like to say that's i agree um item 8.0 okay uh comments and reports by cabinet and superintendent so i'll hand this over to superintendent ortega thank you good evening everyone um i'd like to first and foremost also give my appreciation to the canyon city foundation for their uh generous donation we have seen uh the community really come together to support our students and our families in the district to have access to rigorous learning and experiences and so we are on behalf of them we are very very thankful for that today was the ninth day of school and i just cannot express how grateful and proud i am for the amazing team of classified certificated afe uh administrators uh in azusa uh i have had the pleasure of visiting sites last week and this week and i have just been uh so happy and so thrilled to be able to connect uh with the staff members that are there and present uh to be able to see myself work that is being done at our sites on behalf of our students and for our students and for our families and like it's been mentioned tonight rightfully so and as we would expect we have been challenged with many many unknowns and many concerns and this is because we are launching a new way of opening school new programs new systems new approaches new guidelines new laws new ways to connect and new ways to learn and through all and throughout all of these new things as i have visited sites as i have seen what is happening at the district office and throughout the district i am constantly reminded of the things that have not changed right our commitment to each other our commitment to our students our commitment to our families our pursuit of a better of that kind of that cycle of improvement our collaborative uh spirit to partner and to know that when we come together we get better results and all of this centered and focused around improved student success so thank you to the azusa team for all that you do for our students and thank you to the community for your continued support and partnership as we navigate this together thank you hey um dr dana mitchell well i'd like to also echo that appreciation um within the first few days of school it has definitely taken um a team approach a coordinated effort with with everybody rolling up their sleeves and this is uh classified staff this is teachers and counselors who have been working non-stop to launch distance learning you know hours in terms of balancing classes and making sure you know kids at the secondary are in the right classes and it just it just takes um an incredible amount of time anyway when we're opening up school but doing this in a pandemic um is is a is a completely different uh situation and i am i just i am so grateful to um to just our staff um at the sites and at the district office who have just heard the rally call um and who have just worked together um tirelessly because um because we're invested in the community and so i am appreciative i'm thankful um and um and it just it just gets better every day it's not perfect um and we still continue to to respond but it's really that responsiveness um that um that our azusa unified school district team is is really there for the families and i again i'm just i'm grateful i also want to just um give a a thank you and a shout out to dr jennifer edict bryant for um the collaborative work that she has done uh around the learning continuity um and attendance plan which you're going to hear a little bit about uh tonight um and i just wanted to um to also thank the the parents and the teachers that um and the stakeholders that were uh part of the pact plus and the dlac who really contributed to the development of the plan and i just really appreciate um this collaboration i actually started um in august way before uh before school started this process was going on and so i'm very thankful to um to those parents who um who were participating in this process before we even uh began school so thank you very much thank you dr mitchell and assistant superintendent raquel evening um board of education cabinet community i um i usually start off the uh year and my comments with the happy new year message um i think we're very fortunate in education to have two new years and uh with the new year comes new um opportunities for resolutions or changes and goals um and this year like has been stated already is a year like no other and it's presented quite a bit of challenges um but what challenges kind of brings teams together and i i truly appreciate the leadership of the board and certainly the leadership of our new superintendent um ortega i want to um talk a little bit about our teachers and aea and afe um because i i i it's being a teacher there's always a certain excitement and nervousness that comes with the start of the year um but one thing that makes this year exceptionally different is that no matter where you are in your journey on your professional path this year every teacher feels like a new teacher there is a sense of uncertainty and questioning and needing support very much like one felt in their first year and so i i applaud our teachers and i really want to lift them up for the work that they're doing to really meet the the needs of our students throughout the district i also want to thank our csca employees uh for their dedicated work to the asusa community and the district we have seen instances where employees have uh really gone the extra mile to meet the needs of of of our of our community whether it's answering phone calls uh matching students with chromebooks uh helping to work in the offices to make sure that the correct equipment and protective equipment is is appropriately um set up uh really going that extra mile and i want our csa employees to know that all that extra work has now gone unnoticed and is deeply deeply appreciated with regards to the 10-day results it will be in the board packet that will be arriving on thursday so look out for that information with the data regarding numbers with that thank you and to all have a great year thank you mr unkill uh and next up is assistant superintendent jamal good evening board i just wanted to thank um superintendent jortega and the board for this opportunity um i've only been here a week but i've just felt welcome um the collaboration i witnessed is a testament that we had uh that expressed my interest in this district um i want to thank the members of cabinet making me feel welcome the union leaders um as well as the community members the ones that i've met thus far but more importantly i want to thank the business team for um welcoming with an open arm and being willing to hear what i have to say and be willing to accept me into the family so i look forward to serving you all and collaborating more so thank you thank you miss mr mo all right now uh we will go to item 9.0 report action of closed session matters and there's nothing to report so next we'll move to 10.0 general functions 10.1 covid 19 update superintendent ortega thank you um per board request uh we have added a copic 19 update uh and we will continue to do that uh at future board meetings um until until further notice um and so i will uh i will start uh today um wanted to let everyone know that uh we have uh launched uh a coven 19 compliance team that that naming convention of that team comes right out of the guidelines from the los angeles county department of public health their reopening guidelines and so we stuck with that with that name we were able to collaborate with our uh our bargaining unit partners and decide on what the composition of this team would look like [Music] not only the composition but the recurrence of these meetings when these meetings would happen and kind of the the work and the objectives ahead so uh cabinet will be facilitating uh these meetings uh we will have uh six administrators six aea six afe csea and six parents uh on this team the team is is uh now uh operational so we have all of those folks signed up and ready to go we will be working through the la county department of public health guidelines for reopening schools that is a 19 page document filled with i'm going to say they're not really guidelines they're more about requirements about how we can safely reopen schools we are meeting every other friday from 8 to 9 30 in the morning and we launch this friday i'm also happy to announce that we reached out to laco and got a quick response so i do want to thank laco for that and they have agreed that they would assign some point uh persons to us where we can submit our plans on on a rotating basis uh as we finish or as we think we finish parts of this of this guideline they have agreed that they would take our plan look at those particular sections and give us feedback uh on if we're on the right track if if this is a go we didn't want to wait until the end to submit this big old plan and then come back with a whole mess of um feedback that that we weren't in compliance or that didn't make any sense so very grateful lako they didn't appoint just one person they appointed us three people and so we're very happy about that so our plan is to submit that as we move along just to get some some feedback from them because they have a direct pipeline uh with uh ladph and uh they have a person on staff that uh is constantly in communication with that um board member chris gonzalez did you have a question yeah i would just want to clarify but you answered it because i was like i was saying dph is gonna approve it's why we're going to laco but you just answered it thank you yeah okay cool um so so again we're excited about that we're excited to to get to uh to work on that and move closer and inch closer so that when we do get the green light and and nobody knows when that when that is going to be but when we do that azusa is prepared to be able to to move forward with that uh so that's that's my update on cobia 19.

so grand total of six thousand five hundred and nine chromebooks uh so far um we continue to um take uh if anybody needs a chromebook uh they're still calling the district office we are still taking calls for anyone who is having you know if they have any difficulty or they need some tech support um we are providing that support as well so um we're feeling we're feeling really great about that we feel that um our our students have those devices and um and we are we're in good shape the second um update that i want to provide is that uh you know that um right before school started we hosted a virtual um professional learning uh conference for uh teachers uh just providing different breakout sessions and support uh to help teachers begin to launch their distance learning plan since uh since that time in opening school we have our team of teachers on special assignment our tosa team we have seven tosas who have been providing a continuous stream of support through live sessions and they they have a network going where they take turns so um ptosis are providing support to teachers um with lesson planning and helping them connect to uh their digital resources but what they're also doing is they are holding live a google meet from uh like eight to about three three thirty every day where it is staffed by the teachers on special assignment so anytime we have a staff member that has that immediate question they can just pop in and out and get that immediate support um we've all had the opportunity to just to jump in um and and you know and listen to you know the questions and the support and um and i've seen the just the relief on on teachers faces when um if there's something that they're not quite sure about they have a question something they've you know run up against or they're not quite sure how to access something to be able to have somebody right there right then to help and support them our team has just done a phenomenal job and it's really been a brilliant idea of theirs um to be able to offer this kind of support and just continually how can we support you what do you need how we can can we connect you and um so just um big shout out to uh to the tosa team for thinking of this and really responding to that need to really help um our staff be able to get what they need at the moment all right and for the business team as of friday we officially um delivered our first round of pp e to the sites which included um face coverings um for both um students and staff um that would be cloth and disposable as well as hand sanitizer we are currently installing all of our signage for entryway and exit way as well as plexi shield and dividers and spaces where plexi shield would not suffice we're also working in collaboration with our team to develop our hybrid model that we will be presenting to our covet 19 team for feedback this friday and yes that's it [Music] okay um i'm sorry my allergies uh time for questions and i see the uh board member grier yeah a couple things first that's incredible uh what you shared uh dana about the tosa team that's that that's that's phenomenal i love love the sound of that and i can i can i can just imagine all the ways that that's useful and extremely helpful so i love that that uh that idea that innovative thinking um kind of in in line with that i i um can you speak to what what we're do doing uh in regards to teachers as as this is new you know i i think arthur you said that or jorge one of you said that this is like the first year for every teacher um and and with that in mind since since that is the case and there are new ways of doing things is there space for teachers to share with each other strategies that they're doing and and what isn't what is working and what is specific to on you know some of some of the online uh distance learning interactions um and and if so what is the frequency um that that that that happens yeah thank you for uh for that question so i uh also failed to mention um that the the tosas are also hosting uh they do grade level meetings right so anytime they're like for example uh preschool teachers right so they'll have a specific time in the afternoon and invite the teachers to come and they'll talk about um you know sharing best practices uh they'll talk about um let's say for example they just met to talk about the drdp which is the assessment and and really thinking about how we're going to um do that in a virtual environment um there's a lot of nuances that with that with our younger learners and so um our teacher on special assignment uh jenny lee our director of early childhood education uh brought teachers together to really have those conversations to talk about what will work in those situations and um and get their input on that so um i would say opportunities um probably i would say i would say about maybe twice a week or so just specific specific grade levels to come together to talk about strategies planning i talked to principals regularly and uh you know hearing okay now that we have you know our grade level teams together um how are we getting together and talking about how we plan um i've also today i talked to a principal about some um opportunities for um cross-planning with um with with schools that's one of the benefits i think that we have seen in terms of with this distance learning um we are able to instantly uh reach across the the district and be able to say hey we've got you know um a fifth grade class and we have other teachers for other fifth grade teachers that want to plan um and so we're seeing more collaboration more opportunities for that as well i don't know why we didn't think of that before we could have we could have done that right so this has been an opportunity for us to be able to really use um you know uh kind of this virtual space um and quickly too right we don't have to drive and we can get together and do that so um these are opportunities for us to continually do that it also we have on mondays this is our our time for not only staff minis but for those professional learning communities and so as we um as we begin to put our assessment plans in place and as we begin to um to think about how we're going to use what kinds of assessments that schools will use in terms of common formative as well as our district assessments this is an opportunity for us to really dig in deeply and collaborate across across the district to especially serve to serve those students who need the most support for example our language learners so i would say we have you know regular and frequent opportunities but i think even more so now um with plcs and thinking about how we can you know again bring grade levels and schools together so um they are the tosa team is working with uh grade level teams uh throughout the week in addition to um the the tosa live support and what they do is they rotate so they will have um they will have some of the ptosis in the life support while other ptosis are maybe working with a grade level or they're reaching out individually and supporting teachers as well um and we have teachers too that are also um you know maybe they are in a new grade level and so they need that immediate support in terms of how they connect to the technology um and and that as well i hope that answers it yeah that can i just build on that just a two quick points um i think that that spirit is alive and well and i think i think part of it is is again is is the situation uh that we're in and by what what i mean by spirit is the spirit of sharing and and supporting each other so just as a quick example we have a weekly general session uh that we do every two weeks where we invite the entire staff to get updates on what's happening uh at the district um and so at our last one like somebody asked a question like hey i'm having a trouble with this and then just teachers just started jumping in like how about this how about this how about this uh that's so that's one and then number two um dana uh puts out an email every friday and i have noticed that there she also highlights um strategies that teachers in our district are currently using and so maybe the teacher will create a video or share a document and that's that's being shared out to the entire organization just a couple more examples on that yeah thank you and and i love hearing that i i truly believe that moving forward as we're just learning you know new ways of doing things shared innovation is going to be key and so when when uh there are teachers at you know various school sites in various grades that are learning better and newer ways of doing things providing space and opportunities for that to be shared acros like we said across school sites and and you know cross subject content areas i i think that's just that's just going to be key to figure out some of these uh strategies because we know that this is new for everyone so i so i i i love hearing that the the last question i had was in regards to textbooks um can you just give an update on on where we are with that and the distribution of textbooks or online uh you know pivoting to online materials um what is that looking like now so um yeah so we spent the first uh several days uh getting all the student accounts and as you can imagine we have most of our curriculum is online most of our curriculum has uh different platforms depending on if it's elementary or if it's secondary and so we have spent a lot of time making sure that all of our students have their accounts which they do um one of the pieces is uh is that in order for us to do that the students all have to be in aries in those classes because they are connected to those rosters so it's a pretty fast uh and furious turnaround with that so uh the uh secondaries have all done their uh texture test textbook distributions uh the high schools in the middle schools have already completed that actually had a meeting today with all of the elementary principals to talk about our steps and how we're going to coordinate that so um we were able to meet with the principals the resource teachers and so they are uh working on their plans on how they're going to do that as well and then the other piece too with that is also um the piece with the virtual academy right so um so all of those nuances that come together so they are putting together their plans for me and we should have those uh in a couple of days to be able to figure out exactly when they're going to do it and how they're going to do it so we had a good meeting today to talk about that okay i have a question and mine is kind of frivolous but um if we can get an update on the cif and our sports curriculum of what yeah i mean this has been a blessing at least our football team gets to play on the new fields this year where they would have had to put off and not till next year but um yeah i just like basically to just have an update on what cif is doing as far as contact supports and things like that so parents ask us we have that information and next would be board member arianas hi yes i it's exciting thank you for sharing that 6 500 chromebooks have been distributed now with that being said how many hot spots have have we distributed are they separate are they in the chromebooks they are they're separate and so um i will i will get you a count um for your for your weekly uh packet um roughly it's a little over with the hot spots um about 200 i want to say we also have tablets that are out as well that are connected to wi-fi um we have another um another shipment that is coming in um really any minute it's uh it's in transit and and the idea with this is that um the hot spots are um we're using those for families who are not able to have a permanent connection and we're also using those until we have families um that we are providing that permanent connection so they'll use a hotspot in the meantime until they're actually connected to either spectrum or frontier we also have some other um other service providers depending on where families live that that need that okay and the alignment of curriculum across schools is that happening because i hear you saying you know the toasters and um i've heard from from teachers that toasters are doing a great you know but within that school um what about across the schools is that happening how does that what does that look like yeah so we have um we have our uh our our district board approved curriculum that we use for all grade levels so for example uh we use uh wonders and maravias for elementary everyday mathematics 4 for elementary math we have collections would be for our secondary ela cpm and secondary mathematics and so we do have our curriculum that is across the district we have um curriculum maps um that really help uh teachers in terms of the um i want to say the pacing in terms of you know how the the scope and sequence of the curriculum um the ways in which that uh that teachers use the strategies and different things that does that does vary um you know depending on the teacher but we do use the same curriculum uh in all of our schools i guess my question was are our teachers talking to each other from other schools um about the curriculum yeah tools like different things that they're doing and stuff to be able to to yeah so um and also and part of that right is when the ptosis will hold a um like a grade level planning they'll say okay from uh you know from two to three today we're gonna you know fourth grade teachers can come for language arts or mathematics and so depending on uh you know which toast is facilitating that um and they will go through and talk about um you know uh launching their calendars for example in connected for wonders or for uh uh they'll talk about um assessments that are coming up in the curriculum so yeah they do a lot of a lot of planning a lot of support that is coordinated uh across the across the district so and they've been they've been doing that work um for quite some time and so um you know over the last several years since we've been every time we've adopted a curriculum we've had lots of opportunities for that collaborative planning um and the same thing that we continue to do uh for example last year we um we adopted secondary history social science this year um it was our was our launch with um with science uh for um tk12 so lots of opportunities again for teachers to be able to collaborate professional learning will continue we do a lot of that when we have a new curriculum when we launch a new curriculum we have lots of opportunities for teachers to be able to work together in across sites uh and depending on whether it's secondary elementary so and really and again led by the tosas as well and we do um we do have our publisher partners come in um we we did that uh last spring when we were launching um we also had our science uh publishers um during our virtual uh support for success conference and we had uh we had sessions all day long for people to choose and to come in and um and just really kind of you know get their feet wet and explore the curriculum and you know look at how it's uh what the components are and the technology um and so we just will continue to offer that support um and again facilitated and led by the ptosis but you are doing a phenomenal job thank you board member cruz gonzalez thank you um yeah i have a couple questions um the first one being around just information that's going to be reported out um you know that it's going to be aggregated and that we get like at a district level so that we can understand what distance learning is happening a couple examples would be around like what is our attendance like um you know at both at site and district levels and looking at student groups and their attendance their attendance levels i mean attendance rates as well another example would be around how much synchronous instruction students are actually getting i i appreciate that we're going to be adopting an mou that has um that has like the at least that like the sort of the floor of the the number of instructional minutes but but really i'm having a clear understanding of how much how much face time students are getting with with teachers whether it's whole group or small group instruction um so um things like that i mean those are just examples that i'm putting out there so what i think what i'm requesting is um getting a clear understanding of what the district is proposing in terms of what kind of data to collect um and aggregate that can then be reported to the board um at the board level so that we can understand how distance learning is going um so that's request number one um well i'll just pause there and see i mean have you if you have any um thoughts responses to that or if that's something i should just look forward to yeah um and i and i one of the ways to be able to really take a look in terms of um that synchronous is to take a look at some of the schedules so um we've already been collecting uh some samples of those um and in conversations that i've had um with teachers um they're you know um they they're trying different things right so i'll get a schedule and and then i'll have conversation with uh with with teachers around okay i'm trying something else and um experimenting with breakout groups and whatnot so actually um i have a sample for you just a little sample that i've um i'm putting in your pack for this week to just get an indication of kind of what it looks like um but definitely we will be collecting um uh the schedules because we do want to be able to see in terms of you know the synchronous and asynchronous and we do have to make sure that we are um you know we are meeting um sb98 with that as well so we will take a look at that as well and make sure that you get that information um and then also with the attendance piece and the aggregate of the different subgroups so i just want to be clear i mean i appreciate having artifacts right that shows us different schedules i mean that i would say uh probably creativity in terms of sort of figuring out and how to the best way to deliver instruction but i also am really requesting aggregate information that's collected that we that we just report on a regular basis so that we can track as we go along right i mean i think you see some examples of there's places where they're like districts are reporting on a weekly basis what their enrollment it looks like um and my preference is to be able to make sure we look at it by subgroups so that we're all student groups by work so that we're really digging deep into you know who really is coming and who's not so there's that piece um and then my second request is around um um the the group that you're convening um i just want to get a sense in terms of timeline um um and i appreciate that you're going to be you're going to have feedback from laco as you're developing this but um i just want to get a sense in terms of timeline what you're thinking in terms of being able to develop um develop recommendations um and whether this is going to be like a final at the end recommendations or recommendations as we go along um because i mean as we see the state is already changing right first there was this potential elementary waiver that could happen once once certain criteria is met now there's a new there's a new executive order out or waiver making it clear that you can have small groups of students come into schools like glendale's doing right where it's not with it's not for instruction but they have small groups coming um and with an adult and they're doing their learning at the school campuses supervised you know especially for families where they cannot they don't have that kind of ability to do that at home let's say because two parents are working right so those are the kinds of things that i'm hoping that we can explore and discuss and maybe see if their feasibility went as things roll out right so that one just came out right and so let's i haven't heard a conversation around are we are we thinking about trying to bring some students back on campus especially some of those student groups that that dana talked about or you know i know i heard another example another district where they're really focusing on the kids that just disappeared last spring right and those are the ones that they're inviting back to come to school in classroom supervised within with with with some kind of adult where they're actually logging in with their teacher so those are the kinds of so that's that i mean that's what i'm asking in terms of like the group that you're convening really like where where do you think some of these pieces fit in there and then what is the overall timeline yeah this is part of the the the new and the and the unknown uh because things do change uh rapidly uh so for instance um like the glendale model right that was around quote unquote child care and then you just had last week i believe the green light on asus and 21st century uh grants and so we are uh having those conversations with our asus partners uh thing together uh and how how do we how do we how do we move on that and so it's gonna be it's going to be uh we're gonna have to be extremely flexible uh to pivot one way or or the other um we we do have um the urgency uh to get through uh these 19 pages of guidelines um our understanding talking to laco last week is that those guidelines are going to be updated here soon and so you know how do we stay on top of on top of those things so i don't have a timeline per se i do know that we want to move we want to move quick we want to make sure that that we're getting through these 19 pages and that we have an understanding of how to to move uh to move forward but to your point at the same time as new things come our way and new opportunities uh make theirs make themselves available we don't want to say well we're on pause for that because we're working on this we it's kind of like simultaneous like a parallel uh road to those things so again just as one example already having conversations with our asus partners uh about uh in-person uh support for for students and yeah yeah uh board member okay there you go i just saw that board member pena yes um i have a question regarding the compliance team uh the compliance team you mentioned parents and staff uh is it similar to the imaginary team that you had uh first question but the second question is are they different people are they the same so um every every bargaining uh partner uh selected there are six people and then reported those so for instance a face said these are our people csca said these are people aea said these are our people uh for administration actually half of the team um all of our bargaining partners and and and us uh agreed that half of that admin team that it should be one elementary one minute one middle school and one high school principal so we agreed on that we didn't we didn't name who we just agreed that three of those should be those and so then we we decided on who the other three members would be for that so we we honored the agreement and then for the parents um i took care of that portion so i sent uh a communication to uh d-lock superintendent parent superintendent and parent roundtable and there's one oh and pac plus so send out an email saying hey we're looking for six parents uh this is the commitment the commitment is every other friday for an hour and a half and uh put that communication in english and spanish and said that the first six parents that are willing to do it and can do it uh would join on the team so to your question no it is not identical to the reimagination team um this is different now are there people on this team that were also on that team yes but it's not it's not a carbon copy of it okay and my second question was regarding um probably this is for dana um on the um classified employees are they um instructional aides if they're working with students and i also probably know in the offices things are different even i'm sure taking attendance and things are they being trained also on the news yes so we um we have another uh we've got a professional learning day that's coming up and so uh the the directors and i have been talking about uh the professional learning that we're going to provide we have been getting some suggestions from uh just hearing the kinds of needs that are out there in terms of i'll give you an example like um how you know in terms of google meets for example um an instructional aide might work with uh you know with a group of of students and so how that would work would be the teacher would um create the actual google link uh that they would do and then they would have the instructional aid uh support the students with you know whatever they were doing for um you know for that instructional piece um so that would be one thing uh we'll be providing that as well so we're gonna work with the directors the ptosis uh hr team to uh to really support our classified staff as well um with the instructional support and any other support that they need um that they need as well so so the teacher is actually um working with their instruction and showing them how to use google me and yeah yes and then within the district office it's it's administration or yeah even in the school sites because i'm sure the school sites also you know that like i said that there's the clerical staff working yeah and we've um we have we've been checking out um technology our chromebooks to um to classified and to certificate as well if they need a device um we've had lots of our classified staff check out devices as well um and again if you know um if they need support usually the it's the instructional aides will um they are under the direction of that classroom teacher um but if we have uh any support staff uh you know in the offices at the schools or district office um you know we are here to support them as well with with what they need okay thank you very much okay uh board member ariana's do you have another question yes i actually had a similar question to to my colleague about instructional and them understanding um you know how they were going to be performing their job uh some of them as of now do not know um and have not received information so um it i i don't know what's happening so i just wanted to just bring that up and um if that and i know it's you know it's the ninth day and everything's still trying to um get into place and stuff but i think it would be great there's i i know there's some students that do need that one-on-one aid or that do need extra help so it'd be great if we can get those um aides to be able to connect with their teachers and be able to assist these students um moving forward okay any more questions comments okay so giving time for lag um next we'll move on to 10.2 public hearing on the learning content continuity and attendance plan at this time i would like to bring up dr jennifer edick bryant who has a presentation and will uh give you information regarding our learning continuity and attendance plan hi good evening everybody i don't know if you can hear me and i don't know why i don't have an option to turn my camera on so i would love to see you and so maybe we can get that going and then i think kathy will probably have my presentation slides prepared and and visual shortly as well okay sounds good thank you there we go i'm not sure if people can see me but looks like my camera's on yes i can see you yeah that's it technical difficulties yeah that's okay lots of patience mm-hmm there we go okay thank you kathy appreciate that so good evening president bibles fogel board members mr ortega cabinet members this evening i'm pleased to present to you our learning continuity and attendance plan uh for public hearing um state senate bill 98 often referred to as sb 98 was passed along with the state budget for 2021 at the end of june beginning of july and part of that bill required districts to develop write and present a learning continuity and attendance plan to our community this document's purpose is to inform our community about our plans for the 2021 school year to describe the process by which we developed those plans um and and california department of ed came out with a template that we were to use in the first of august and it uh also indicated the california department of ed when i say it the department indicated that this is really a living document which means that it is expected that it will it will adjust and change as our needs and our circumstances change with with the covet 19 distance learning and all of the things that are happening uh during this school year so the plan has 13 sections and prior to you opening the public hearing this evening i would like to provide you with an overview of the plan uh in this presentation the full written plan was also shared with you and the public in the board agenda item and that is also available for review next sli oh right there perfect so the plan begins with a general information section that describes the impact of covid19 on our community how the ausd community came together we managed the closures of our schools and came together to develop the plan for fall learning the second section focuses on stakeholder engagement and as you recall this is a core component of our closures last spring the reopening schools imagination team convened and they developed the work that they did really contributed to the development of our learning continuity plan we gathered uh stakeholder input through meetings through surveys through general outreach which included your public board meetings the district was also able to engage stakeholders in the decision making on on the plan itself we had meetings with pac plus with dlac with the superintendent and parent roundtable sharing a draft of the plan with them and allowing them to to provide some feedback and we we made the plan available to the community as well anybody that wanted to see the plan and make comments on it on the draft of the plan the third section really touches upon our our in in person uh instruction and and it indicates that when safe to do so and in accordance with state and local mandates ausd will return to in-person learning it will talk about the the transition into classrooms with as little disruption as possible the continuing of the same curriculum and and pacing of courses it also this section also really shares about how we will be adding to our cleaning and social distancing guidelines and some of the procedures that we'll take to continue to keep people safe when we do allow and are able to have our students return tracking and monitoring of students in the area of academic achievement social and emotional learning will take place as we do this transition and they are designed again to to be as smooth as possible given uh the transition that will eventually occur and absolutely as we go through we will we'll be prioritizing our students who who have the highest needs in particular looking at our our emergent bilingual students our english learners and that term emergent bilinguals is something that we've been using more around our district office and so you'll hear that this evening but also our students who are in foster care are students from low-income families our students with disabilities our students who are experiencing homelessness will be looking at their experience and their transitions as well as we come back to in person schools next slide the next six sections of the learning continuity plan fall under the heading of distance learning and so the the fourth section continuity of instruction is where we share about the implementation of our our block schedule distance learning 2.0 plan that we're currently um going living in there there's a description of the plan with within this section there's also a link to our reopening schools imagination team plan and document as well as the schedules that are posted on our website so that people who are reading the plan can see what a typical day would look like for an elementary student or a secondary student as well as see all of the work that the reopening school's imagination team did in developing plans for opening this fall this section also notes some of the alternate options for our students and families including our azusa virtual academy long-term independent study and home school options in the device access and connectivity section the plan describes not only our spring distribution but the ongoing chromebook distribution and hot spot distribution that dr mitchell was sharing with you earlier and how that continues to take place this fall chromebooks and hot spots are checked out through systematic record keeping on spreadsheets and also put into our student information system and so not only does this allow us to track and monitor our distribution of chromebooks and hot spots but also to monitor student access to um to the learning because we have a record of who has has those devices in the pupil participation in progress section section 6 we share a little bit about how our distance learning block schedule plan does have both synchronous that live face-to-face interaction with teachers and students and students and their peers as well as the asynchronous instructional time the district also uh currently exceeds the the number of daily minimum minutes that are required by the state and so we are meeting those requirements and exceeding those requirements and also in this section it addresses this idea that we now have grades and attendance and that will also help us support and monitor our students and their engagement in distance learning next slide the seventh section shares our plans to provide professional development for teachers and again you heard some of the things already from dr mitchell in her update we are we are reflecting on the opportunities that took place in the spring and also really planning for for this school year team tosa as you as you know began supporting teachers with technology training online curriculum info implementation and they have really provided that pivotal role this fall as well for example you know their daily live support sessions that have been held every day since students returned for to support our staff our superintendent continues to hold ongoing general information sessions for all staff and as dr mitchell mentioned our our support for success virtual professional learning conference on august 17th was a very successful opportunity for us to to begin the professional learning um for this year we'll we will have ongoing opportunities taking place on our our pupil free days as well as after school topics are going to include things such as emotional social and emotional learning development of formative assessments in a virtual setting technology use implicit bias and and our outside partners will continue to support us um as they did even on august 17th to to provide training and workshops to to meet the needs of our staff the eighth section describes um how we have had to adjust any roles and responsibilities of staff due to covid19 and we are partnering with our bargaining units to really make these changes role shifts have been done within the general scope of employees job descriptions um and hr has been really processing those family first corona virus relief act applications in in addressing the the jobs of our our staff in our district section nine uh touches upon how are we are supporting students with unique needs and and again unique needs includes students who are low-income students in foster care emergent bilingual students and again that term to describe our english learners further we also are addressing um the needs of our students with disabilities and our students experiencing homelessness our distance learning block schedule 2.0 plan offers increased instructional support during the day for example at the elementary level we have a dedicated time before in the mornings in the afternoons for our emerging bilingual students and then to provide our students with disabilities services um secondary students have class periods where they have built into their schedules and then we also have the family and student connection time four days a week where where this can be a time where students can can have their needs addressed uh with their specific teachers and we continue to focus professional learning and have opportunities for staff to learn how to address the students with unique needs for example we offered several uh sessions on august 17th in in working with students with disabilities as well as our emergent bilingual students the next section describes how the district will address pupil learning loss due to covet 19 and we'll be using multiple measures to determine learning loss we have district assessments we have purchased a reading inventory for all students grades k through 12 and this measures students reading levels and it's important because reading is such a critical skill when it comes to all content areas and so this will really enable all teachers to kind of get a feel for where their students are we have our common formative assessments and we have language acquisition assessments that will help us look at the reading writing speaking and listening progress of our students absent of s back and lpac right now we've created these within within our district and so these assessments coupled with site-specific measures are will really help us to identify students who may need more added intervention within and outside of class we have our professional learning communities who continue to use this data to drive their instruction and intervention and the measures and growth for students on all of these assessments will really also help us evaluate the effectiveness in addressing pupil learning loss because these are ongoing measures these aren't just one time a year we'll also look at the mental health and social and emotional well-being of our students and the 11th section touches upon this and we'll be monitoring that through social emotional questionnaires for our students we have teacher observations and we're also scheduled our our listening circles with students in grades 5 through 12 where we can gather qualitative data about their experiences which will include the social and emotional well-being as well as academic areas um in section 12 the topic is school nutrition and azusa continues to to do the drive-through and system to distribute meals right now nutrition services has developed several options that may be used and as we transition to perhaps a hybrid or make a full return to school so we're continuing to provide meals to to our families next slide so within the learning continuity plan our actions and expenditure estimates and and these descriptions and the amounts that have been developed are based upon um some of the things that we talked about during our reopening schools imagination team and that plan as well as some of the ongoing expenditures we expect for the year the planned budgets are a combination of lcap supplemental and concentration funds and our federal learning loss mitigation funds that are one-time funds that we're receiving uh from the federal government to address cova 19.

okay uh and then uh del rio is down 52. heritage is only down seven and the high school's only down 24. so most of the loss of that 149 is at the k5 level some exciting news that we learned yesterday um we had talked about every meeting we seem to talk about feeding kids and how important it is to feed kids during this time we received information from the state i'm sorry from the feds the u.s department of agriculture that they are extending these summer feeding program waivers what that means for our kids we are still kind of working through it but at least initially what we think is that all our students whether they are free reduced or full paid will get a free breakfast and a free lunch so that's exciting because that's going to make sure kids don't have to worry about paying for that meal that they their parents may or may not have money for um the things that we are concerned about are um can we do we have to only give food for four days or can we get food for seven days and then we were talking today about how do we get the food out for the kids so that's some of the things that we are still learning about and i believe that there's a webinar on thursday that lori smith our food service coordinator is going to be attending and she should get some answers then but the initial information is exciting that we'll be able to feed our kids for free and then on the back of the of the memo i'm going to give a little um disclaimer to start i'm going to talk about proposition 208 i am not telling how i'm telling you how to vote and i'm not telling the public how to vote on the back side oh you don't have it there you go however do you not have it either okay so um it was on the back of the memo sheet and so anyway so give me this maybe read it pass it around okay i don't i'm not telling you how to vote on a proposition because i can't the district can't what i'm going to do is give you some facts about the proposition so proc 208 is the invest in ed proposition it will be on the november 3rd ballot what it is um it was actually um there was a challenge to the proposition and it was originally a lower court said it should not be on the ballot it went to the arizona supreme court and they said it should be on the ballot so that's as far as it can go it's going to be on the ballot and it's going to be on as prop 20.

and then it is three and a half percent tax on um earnings over five hundred thousand dollars for a couple filing jointly so if somebody earns five hundred and one thousand it'd be thirty five dollars just on that one thousand dollars or five thousand the money has four purposes um one is for salaries of teachers and other classroom um personnel one is for salaries or to hire people for student support positions that would be like nurses and counselors those that work with students to help them get through school success successfully one is to retain and train teachers to keep them in schools and hire teachers and the fourth purpose that we would have is for career and technical education expenses there is a fifth one that the state would do which is to fund the arizona teacher academy to make sure that we have um to help with the teacher shortage so that prop that's what the proposition would do and what the proposition would be used for i recommend that people do their own research and find out exactly what it is and make their own decision on whether they should vote for it or not but those are the facts associated with prop 208 our lobbyists sent out an email to us and told us that it would be our impact would be about 100 i'm sorry 1.6 to 1.7 million dollars in additional revenue for the four purposes that i just discussed and i believe that's it as far as my report goes unless there's any questions any questions any questions any no i'm good okay and moving on we'll go to item 6b1 financial reports rebecca okay so august we were still working in two months so i have um both fiscal years to present so for fiscal year 1920 um it looks like we're ending our mno budget at 5.48 percent so the carry over is actually a little more than the 400 000.

so that's a remarkable change you mean 1 000 no 131. 100 000 versus 5 000 because they were the full-time students all of them that's both part-time and full-time enrollment wow yeah so it's a big huge increase and as you know the um when it comes to arizona online the adm calculation the average daily membership calculation is is very different and as the first calculation occurred august 13th which is um five days after we started um the the uh counts were very very low but i just wanted to to make sure that you all were aware of those those numbers in addition to that looking globally now so how many students have we lost globally so we've lost about 980 students year over year in enrollment this is not average daily membership we've lost 980 students year over year so um so based upon that information we are going to see a reduction in our budget for the current year to get us to the 98 percent guard rail from last year okay however we have some cares act funding and i wanted to go into some detail about that as well as the enrollment stabilization grant so if we go to the next slide so i wanted to share that this is the analyses that we've done thus far regarding the cares act that was the amount of money that we knew we had that was over and above what we budgeted for that's the 2.3 million dollars and you can see the total looking at two years of identified direct spend associated with the pandemic that was eligible under the cares act funding is just over 2.1 million dollars so of that 2.3 million dollar pot we've spent 2.1 million leaving us with about 200 thousand dollars to meet additional needs that are related to covid so are there any questions on that so i wanted to make sure that i identified those details can you tell me what the online instruction six hundred one thousand so that was the expansion of the florida virtual and let's see in the uh training associated with all of our teachers being trained on the florida virtual so that was that was making it a site licensed le sorry a site license versus um versus a uh versus being pay as you go i know i thought we were going to save i thought we were looking at 350 to 400 it was and so we're identifying expenditures associated with eligibility for the cares act so to to to move some expenditures however to answer your question we spent about 350 000 last year but the budget was about 150 000 so the additional 200 dollars was the pay as you go especially during the summer when we had um summer school that was online um and so the then moving that three hundred fifty thousand dollars up to the site license brought us to the six hundred one thousand and then but that means globally i mean district-wide um k-12 that's the total cost i wouldn't assume that for in the future it would be back to a 350 000 a year it will not it will not unless we've made a decision that we're not going to keep the site license yes we can go back down to just the minimum uh going into the 2022 school year i believe do i have that correct barbara it's okay that's okay we don't need to talk about that right now thank you okay okay so um so then the other part of that is the 98 guard rail um so the 98 of weighted student count from last year so we were estimating a 400 student actually a 400 adm loss that's what we budgeted for going into 2021.

we are making this decision not just for our families but for everyone in this community and i think we're doing this as safely and carefully as we can using the benchmarks going back in a hybrid model so that we can monitor for a couple weeks get kids used to being back in school because it's been a long time for them i just you know i just i don't know of any time in my lifetime that kids have missed this much school although i heard about australia with their fires they missed a lot of school and the kids still were able to achieve and catch up and do well with their studies so i i expect the same of us that when we get back in school and we have our kids there that will all be responsible both in school and at home so that we can keep the virus spread down and keep everybody safe and have that education and i just think that's really really important for our kids to be back in school and that's what we all want some of us see it as going a little sooner and some of us see it as going a little later but i think having the time in the hybrid model we get time to get used to it we get time with the kids to help them adjust and i think it will be you know something that we can have in case things don't go well but i hope that we've learned our lesson from the summer and that we'll continue to have the kind of behavior we need in arizona to keep that spi that spread of the virus down and let our kids get back in school just thank you thank you ma'am everyone having had an opportunity to speak and to share appreciation if there is nothing else we are adjourned

i'm sure some of you may have seen the article that was written in the standard times about a proposal that was made um for regional pods um again that's something that is still ongoing um but again with a large conference in in our mayflower athletic conference in our area that has decided to move everything to fall too um those schools are off the off the board south coast conference which be the next school is a league of ten um they still don't know at this point um what they're doing as a league and or individual schools and again if we were to to get approval we would at least have four of us that would be able to move forward um and again creating game schedules is is difficult and the and the other part of that is with the mayflower athletic conference dartmouth dartmouth high school is not a great up for for those schools those are traditionally you know smaller schools that play in lower divisions um the south coast conference which again has a large and small which five large schools five small schools um in 10 and all they um they could very well decide that they want to schedule only conference games so now we would be left if we were to move to a different season this fall sports through different season we would be left with a struggle to find the opponents because our league at the southeast conference would move forward with or without us so again that's another big reason to highly consider um this proposal and the last one is reserving transportation now we again we trembly bus is our main transportation company uh new greater new bedford volk uses uh trembley new bedford high school uses trembling and again when we're all going to be required to have only a certain amount of students as student athletes and staff on a bus and we're going to need to request additional buses uh depending on you know when our reservations are and what other school schedules look like it could get very challenging for participation transportation so that's another factor that will need to be worked on okay so again at the very beginning i i shared with you some of the school-based decisions um and i highlighted what my answers are in red um can we honor the safety precautions i put with proper communication transparency responsibility buy-in absolutely yes is the best option to move false sports to fall too and put by competing in the traditional fall season we eliminate issues with scheduling follow-through and environmental concerns another thing is if the decision was to move false sports to fall too now you're in a season that will begin in february and um the challenge was would be to roll out of season uh with possible weather concerns six inches of snow on the ground and um we're fortunate to have a a turf field we're fortunate to have a large activity center but i think it would be an extreme challenge for us to pull it off never mind some of the smaller schools who have grass fields and smaller gyms but the fear of offering volleyball football unified basketball field hockey boys and girls soccer cheerleading all in the same season and again in the facilities if we were to have to start indoors that would be a scheduling nightmare and on top of it depending on what our situation is with the restrictions and the guidelines we might not be in any better in shape in february and march than we are right now now we're going to bring student athletes and teams indoors which again brings in a different element of challenge in a very restricted time to be able to get practices in so again it just it makes perfect sense to move forward and offer everything that we can in the fall season that is realistic for us and the last one who we're going to play you have your new bedford durfee bridgewater and again additional schools and schools there's certainly many conversations that are happening um to try to get commitments from schools and and again that is ongoing are we willing to to compete while following the new sport rules um we're going to adapt and to adjust uh in order to give our students the opportunity to safely participate and which with strategic planning transportation will not be an issue so again going back to our first question what is in the best interest of our students health safety and well-being physically socially and emotionally put six things in order if we were to offer off fall season and and allow our student athletes to compete in the approved sports it will promote physical social emotional well-being of students it will again engage them in physical activity it will prevent students from seeking other less healthy extracurricular outlets it engages student athletes and creates academic accountability because again they will be remote there will be a system in place that if they were not attending their remote classes they would be absent and ineligible to participate that day so that's the accountability piece it creates a sense of normalcy and the last one it promotes structure routine and balance and those are six key components as to why i feel that we need to move forward with this and i am confident that we will be able to do it safely so that is our presentation thank you sir uh fantastic presentation thank you very much yes the only the only issue and like i said this is a phenomenal format um the only thing that i think i may struggle with is is hearing questions um if they were to be asked i'll do the best i can simple easy question uh with all of this going on and you know somewhere down the line somewhere down the line we don't have watch it because i guess jonathan i can't i can't hear you okay i'm gonna he's gonna what what's the status for athlete of all seasons with all of this going on what is the status of i'm sorry what season f the athletes you know like the the three sports for 12 seasons the athletes would um the mi is allowing a four season student athlete so again if uh in a traditional season they are allowed to compete in one sport per season so three in all in this format of a four um season you know layout they would have the ability if they so chose to compete in four seasons are we are we able sometimes we've played rhode island schools is that on a table this year or is that out so mr news the the the goal the goal that that i've had from the very beginning and and i presented to 28 athletic directors in our um immediate area and presented it last week was a pod idea in which we grouped schools in pods local pods so five or six schools within a very close distance so that we would be able to common schedule with each other the leagues would be removed from um play for this year uh and again i think it would it would be a great thing moving forward unfortunately as i mentioned there are a lot of schools that have their own challenges and some of their own concerns and some have already decided to move their fall season from traditional fall to fall too which i think after presenting i think you would know i that is something that i would not recommend um because of the the challenges and so many of the unknowns i'm a firm believer that a bird in hand is better than two in the bush so if we are this and and weather-wise the fall is the best of the three seasons so if we do have the situation in which we can roll out an athletic program and offerings safely i believe that is in our best interest to do so yeah but again uh with the regional play mr news to answer your question we would not be playing rhode island schools that's good thank you one thing to remember when you get into fall two is you've got the indoor percussion and the indoor color guide that also need the gym so it's just it puts that much more pressure on absolutely and again when you when you talk about the logistics of scheduling and i and i certainly um didn't purposely leave them out i i i think anyone who has had conversations with me about that particular situation every conversation that that i've been involved with i have mentioned the space uh for color garden band that between the month of the months of mid-february um till the beginning of april i know that traditionally with competitions that is a hot time for indoor facility use i don't know what their situation is moving forward as far as what their competitions would look like but that has certainly been brought up in every single conversation that i've had concerning the the uh the issues with moving fall to fall too and um indoor scheduling okay and my last my last question at the moment is this is just approving the plan this is not saying what students can or cannot participate whether they're remote or hybrid no no that that that's that obviously that that is a conversation an issue that would be um determined um at a later date you know obviously not right now that's that's a conversation that will will involve um other individuals and it's totally separate from what i would be presenting and recommending right now thank you sir uh miss waite you want to go next sure um hi so i just have a one quick question first of all i should step back and say excellent presentation i had questions that came up and you answered jonathan i can hear her loud and clear it was great very thorough um you know i agree with no fans i think again to your point let's really focus on getting the kids you know out of the fields and playing um you know i agree with your timing i think we want to try to as you said bird in the hand let's get them out in the fall um take advantage of the good weather we don't know what's in front of us um so those sports that we can let's let's get them going um the only question i guess i had regarding transportation is you know as we kind of think about busing and i know that you know when we're actually physically bringing students back and forth to school parents are opting in some cases drive students themselves um is that going to be has that been passed around as an option for parents again i know we're not going to have fans but are they able if they choose to drive their children to competitions and that's okay um in a traditional year i would say no um because again i i i think there is so much value and importance of not only um you know being transported with your your your teammates and your peers and your coaches to and from events in the uh and and from my experience as a student athlete um those were great times and and a great piece of the experience now in this case again these nothing has been finalized but that has been brought up and discussed as to um what would constitute um or i should say what procedures that we would have in place um i can tell you that there's also been conversations about um having you know offering athletics and having it a five day a week program this this uh this season and again i'm just sharing with you some conversations that have happened that nothing has been finalized yet because again there's just so many moving parts but i just want to let all of you know that this has been extremely thought out well thought out and um we've exhausted our resources as far as you know my athletic director peers our state association the miaa and and all the guidelines that we'll have to follow so again we're we're kind of uh up out front with this um but again there are a lot of things that are in place there are some things that are not but that has definitely been a topic that has been discussed and a topic that will be considered okay well again thank you very much for you know again to your point excellent very well thought out so i appreciate it thank you you're welcome ms amaral can you hear me i don't know if you can are you able to hear me kathleen doesn't have a teacher voice like mary so jonathan's gonna have to so i i just wanna express you know my gratitude for this well thought out presentation as well um that it has been clear from day one of mr christophule joining us here in dartmouth his level of expertise and and he mentioned hitting the ground running and i have full faith based on how he hit the ground running here um with his leadership and his expertise in the plan that he's presenting my one i be like mary i've been crossing out some questions that i had along the way so you've done a really good job well thought out in what we might we might ask but one one thing that just came to mind in terms of students registering for their particular choice of sport uh might there might might it um might there be an option to sort of rank rank choice so a student instead of revisiting the pot when you realize you don't have enough for a particular event um sorry mr galicia what was that what was the question like where they ch choose their first and their second choice um so that you don't have to kind of come to the community again to say could you pick yourself well um unfortunately the way that the scheduling program i i shouldn't say scheduled program the way that the registration program um runs is students have the ability to sign up for the sport in which they're interested in now um now please know that there there are you know there are sports that have the opportunity to move forward competitively and there are some sports as i mentioned that uh are traditional fall sports that do not have the the ability to move forward and there are so my first goal is to take care of the situation in which we are going to decide which sports competitively we can move forward with once that has been determined and set up there is a second piece that we've already had multiple conversations about in which there there could be and i i want to um i don't want to you know it this could happen where the some of the traditional fall sports that are not competitive um could have the opportunity to have some type of organized team activity um there's also could be a situation in which again that organized team activity could be a strength and conditioning program very similar to the one that we were successful in running over the summer time so again my full attention has been on the sports that have been cleared to to uh to compete and once that has been determined and solved then my attention will go to step two of what we are going to be able to realistically offer the other sports that could have that opportunity mr galashaw can i can i follow up here i think what miss amaral is getting at say we don't have enough kids to feel the freshman soccer team would those students then have the option to say choose cross-country i think that's what you're getting at right yeah so so what you're asking and i'll and i'll i'll just be very upfront with the with the so if i was a uh an individual who tried out for soccer and soccer did not work out for me could i move now move to you know compete or be part of a different program now again in your traditional season in your traditional year there are things that are in place that we follow as far as our rules for but for these matters and for these cases the focus is on the students the focus is on getting them involved and getting them to safely be able to be part of something for all of the aforementioned reasons i mentioned so for those cases and for those matters it's going to be a lot more flexible than we traditionally would be because i think again the time that we're in right now it warrants it thank you but again just just to let you know like like i said i i and again i think there will be certain lines that are drawn where i'll give you an example so um so if field hockey for example if um you know they they start their season they have their their tryouts and workouts they move forward they get into game play or right on the cusp of game play that movement it would be too late but you're still talking about two and a half weeks and again i i don't want to say too late but i but it would be a lot more challenging um to justify that part of it but again i mean we we are we are we would be rolling this out um safely for our students with the um the hope that they will choose to participate for all the reasons why we stated why it was important so again we will we will be flexible uh and again with many of the situations thank you so i many of my questions were answered as we went through i had the same question as miss amaral my one of my questions is um the no attendance policy is our policy so that may mean that new bedford or brockton may have a different attendance policy is that correct or has there been any discussion of a uniform attendance policy so as as i mentioned towards the beginning of the prayer or i should say the middle um we have a meeting set up for tomorrow with within our conference and we're looking to get some consistent conference norms now i i can't guarantee that those norms would be attendance policies because again each district has the autonomy to create their attendance policies create their academic policies as far as eligibility standards so again it it would vary um so i would not be totally confident walking into that meeting and conversation knowing that i could leave and we are all of the belief that this is exactly how we're going to handle this attendance wise because again every situation every school department has their own challenges um but there is there needs to be some commonality amongst a lot of what we do since we're going to be servicing their kids and they're going to be servicing ours so again um i wouldn't be confident that i could walk out saying that we're all under the same umbrella as far as what our expectations attendance wise are um but you know we we would handle those situations and what is in the best interest of of dartmouth high school um and you know the protocols and procedures that we would uh we would have in place that we will be so i don't have any question mark questions for mr chris fully i have a sort of a statement but he doesn't have to worry about answering i mean i am personally inclined you know mr chris cooley asked the question are we willing to compete with the new rules i was a high school and college soccer player i don't really know how they're going to play soccer with these rules i read them the other day and they're like crazy but i would rather give kids the opportunity to try than to not try at all and i think you know it's on us to make sure that our kids can play and that everybody follows the rules that we do not establish a mentality of playing through right if you are sick you don't come if you quarantine you quarantine because otherwise you will ruin the season for everyone and so i think we have to be really clear in setting a message about how serious we are going to be about this because you don't want to be the person that ruins the season for everyone else that having been said yeah i think we're all definitely in favor of it if someone would like to make a motion or statement well i will in one second i mean again and i think the onus has got to be on the parents and specifically the student athletes and any student okay if they get up in the morning and they're not feeling good they can't come to school they can't come because they can't they can't be bringing possibly bringing anything here i mean that goes for anyone type of type of deal that's my two cents and with that madam chair i will make a motion that we approved the uh school committee presentation for uh uh school year 2021 for athletics as presented by mr christophuli i second that all right so i have a motion by mr nunes a second by miss amaral any further discussion i will just add one thing job andrew thank you to mr nunes comment i would say thank you at the university level we have learned that relying on behavior of children without fully developed brains is not the easiest thing to do so i really want to put the onus on parents right this is in the community this is on us we have to model this for our kids and we have to be sure that we are sending the right message to our kids right because 15 year olds i have 16 17 year olds in the house they don't always make the best decision so we've got to help them make those right decisions that have been said um all in favor aye aye opposed that carries unanimously thank you mr christophule um we look forward to moving forward with our sports season and we thank you for your presentation let us know what else we can do thank you thank you folks and as i mentioned it's it's it's been um it's been quite a process to get to this point and it continues to evolve and but please know that um i'm greatly appreciative of your support for our students and student athletes in our programs um and we will do everything within our power to make sure that this runs as smooth as it possibly can thank you thanks andrew so with that we'll move on to which is usually like one of my favorite times of the year the introduction of new hires we get to meet all the new teachers we get free food snacks right you know this is all the vera is usually here to introduce everyone so coven ruins something else i guess but we are going to learn about our new teachers yes at least a little bit even if they can't be here so i'm excited to um to hear more about them is dr gifford you're going to take over yes thank you so we are we are going to um we actually had a presentation as part of the convocation yesterday um mrs oliveira talked about our our new hires so we're gonna just replay that tonight so we're pretending she's here but i do want to mention that in addition to the folks here you already know that we have three new administrators i'll just re-mention them if you will director of music ian flint because they're not up in here mark hayes at the middle school was was one of our teachers and he is now one of the assistant principals and of course dr justine dale who you met via virtual as the new elementary the early childhood director so they're not in here but these are the folks that mrs oliveira has now started working with in project time so if we're ready to go mr galashaw let's do it good morning everyone welcome back to a exciting school year one of my favorite things to do here at project at batman public schools is project time we have a wonderful group of new folks together um every year at project time i think i say the same thing but this year was truly meaningful i've never felt so old uh working with all the new teachers all the new young teachers but we had a great two days together um what i call dhammatizing them getting them ready to go out into the trenches um the mentors then took it over from there but i gonna bring you to this quote where we really talk about what what we need to do and i hope that all of our new teachers can know that they're making a difference in their lives along with everyone else um this year we had a little bit of a i just can't figure out how to move this one so when you see someone walking around the building with a new button today today welcome them socially distant say hi i don't know how folks are going to learn people's names when we're all wearing masks but they'll get it we need name tags with our mask but welcome everyone it's my pleasure to introduce our new folks this year starting with casey allaire she's a third grade teacher at quinn elementary school and mrs jeanine tavaz is her mentor eric bosworth is at dartmouth high school as a new computer science teacher and mr doug smith is his mentor jacqueline bryant is a grade 3 teacher at quinn elementary school and janine tavaz is going to be her mentor also ellie cassand casana is a grade one teacher at quinn elementary school and michelle giosa is her mentor carrero is not new to us but she's here in a new position she will be a special education teacher at quinn elementary school and lindsay vaffides will be her mentor rebecca conden a graduate of dartmouth public schools is coming back as a kindergarten teacher at potter elementary school with mrs dana ducette as her mentor craig dutra is a grade 5 teacher at potter school with darren florence has his mentor marissa hill a math teacher and computer science teacher at dartmouth high school with mrs patricia fretcher being her mentor caitlin coker also not new to dartmouth public schools but in a brand new position will be our grade seven special education teacher with mrs lisa cat turgeon as her mentor mary clean a grade six math and science teacher at dartmouth high school with mrs ann brown as her mentor and we welcome desiree meadow a grade five special education teacher at quinn elementary school with mrs seren salvador as her mentor stephanie montero will be at grade eight math teacher at dartmouth middle school with lisa keem being her mentor julie newman is our new math teacher at dartmouth high school with mrs deb august as her mentor kylie thatcher is a grade four teacher at de melo elementary school with mrs jennifer clune being her mentor we welcome everyone we're happy to have them on board say hello to them and let's make it a great year that's it our new bees they're all babies well i don't know if any of them are watching us but normally we get to say welcome to them and you know say how glad we are to have them on board we are glad to have them on board um and you know somewhere down the line when this all breaks we'll get to have an evening yeah maybe we'll have a double meeting next year with your coaches you know before the year is out we'll have a chance to to meet them all before can you imagine though being you know not only new to a district but perhaps new to teaching in general to start like this yeah i can't even anyway it is it is what it is it is what it is all right so our next item on the agenda is the superintendent update on the start of school sure thank you so we have a few things uh we wanted to update you on obviously we had opening day for our teachers and this was day two and um all of us visiting the schools folks were busy they had they were involved in their professional development which i think i sent you the s'mores with the various uh things that they were involved in but you know we really wanted these yes these 10 days not only with the health and safety protocols that they've mandated training that they'll be involved in but also of course a lot of work with their colleagues to be able to get their room set to really figure out what they're doing for when the kids come back making sure the rooms are set up for them and various technology sessions etc so you can look at that in in that s'mores that mrs oliveira created and all the professional development that's in but again in general all of us visiting the schools people were positive they were i think a lot were very excited to be back we have also been working a lot on the virtual we're calling learning academies for the various levels so as i mentioned to you previously we were working on creating our own virtual learning academy for our elementary level uh that just made more sense for us so we have um i think we welcomed three today new teachers because we posted three was it three came in today i believe um we are going to be using the quinn elementary school the giant um music room there are two office spaces off of it so we can fit six teachers in that space uh we'll be securing some furniture as well as some kind of uh partition if you will and again it's going to be completely virtual for those students that are choosing not to return at all and we are posting for we're calling it a virtual academy coordinator if you will a teacher stipend position that will be helping mrs oliveira she'll oversee the whole thing but to have the day-to-day help with those teachers uh again a lot of new young folks that are coming in to to first time teaching positions so we'll be giving them that help as well as of course a mentor a regular grade level mentor so we're excited about it we're all anxious about it of course but we think it's going to be a good program they will have our curriculum that was one of the bonuses that we thought we would take it over ourselves but continuing the high school is continuing to work with the ingenuity platform and we are now we actually switch from ingenuity because it just was not going to work for the middle school with too much independent work we are looking and we're pretty positive i would say 99.9 that we are going to be using the techa platform for the middle school instead we've had meetings with the middle school this week with mr galashaw and um unless the whole world blew up we are in with techa so each school is reaching out to parents that expressed interest in virtual platforms so that is now being handled by the school level so people have questions about that they need to contact the schools their individual schools and their questions can be answered we also completed um the color-coded calendar we have scrutinized that because every little thing can be a mistake and it's so much intricate detail and we uh did post that up on the website today but we found one little mistake of course so we're going to pull it down we just didn't mean anything but we're hoping that helps parents so see when their their cohort of students will be attending school again not knowing if that switches in the long run or what but we're hoping that will help parents um navigate through this on this crazy time um so other than that as you know i think some of you watched it and we also have posted on our website the link to dr bromage's session and as just for folks at home that may not know he's associate professor of immunology and he's leading research programs at umass dartmouth focusing on immune responses to infectious pathogens etc we had him speak for a couple of hours last week virtually to the staff and i have to say we had tons of positive comments from people that watched it that felt much more comfortable and confident coming back to the schools as well as we got some ideas which i know mr kylie's going to talk to you about in a minute but we did post that link on the website so folks can watch that it's very important we think one of the major major points that he stressed over and over again was that the risk factor can be significantly decreased by what we're doing right now the mask wearing and the social distancing that's number one topic for folks but anyway with that for the school opening and the covet update i asked mr kylie to be part of that to really talk about more about the the uh building and the facility uh preparation so thank you dr gifford so we've had a chance in some of our school committee meetings to talk about some of this but yesterday i had the opportunity to share with staff some of the things that we've been working on to uh begin this this new phase so um it's an exciting transition after five and a half months of planning and hoping that we were going to come back and then not getting back and now finally getting back so um we've spent this time as you know receiving guidance preparing getting revised guidance adjusting our preparations getting more guidance adjusting again it's been really you know a unique complex time for us to deal with but i guess before i get into the details i i think that i'd be remiss if i didn't thank rick ferreira and his maintenance staff as well as the building administrators and their support staff and custodians who really have stepped it up and and made this possible it's i certainly wouldn't be here today in this position without um incredible efforts on their parts so yeah we began the process in march of course uh hoping that we were gonna have a quick return and cleaning the buildings disinfecting the buildings obviously we were very disappointed that that never happened but we continued our efforts from then until now hvac maintenance has been an area of focus cleaning filter changes adjusting system settings to increase fresh air exchange that's been one of the things that we've been talking to dr bromage about window maintenance and installation in some cases we were mr ferreira came up with some great ideas for installing windows in spots that actually weren't opening weren't functioning open windows in the past so we did that adjusting working with our custodial staff to adjust their hours so that they will have time during the day to focus on high touch surface areas and cleaning those focusing on providing epa list and sars cove ii approved chemicals that can kill covet 19 as disinfectants for us purchasing items to make to apply those like electrostatic sprayers and simple cans of spray and lots of different you know techniques in order to make sure that the buildings are disinfected uh after you know some confusion with before the state came out with its official guidance on physical distancing once we finally realized that their sort of wishy-washy language wasn't going to work for us and we focused on six feet we worked to configure classroom spaces in other spaces to alter them in ways so that we could provide physical distancing we leased storage spaces for lots of furniture and are still leasing i just signed a new one this morning for another unit at the middle school because we're filling these things up it's amazing how much stuff you pack into a classroom when you're not worried about how much stuff you have in a classroom so that's an ongoing thing that we'll be you know continuing over the next couple of weeks as we prepare for students um we are purchasing uh mrs oliveira has been working to purchase individual student supplies so that we can limit the sharing of items we have created with the help of the administrators in the buildings protocols including traffic patterns signage so that we can help kids understand where they need to be and where they shouldn't be and how to move about the buildings we're continuing to you know continuing to apply all those signs to areas floors walls frantically moving on those that's where i was this morning at eight o'clock i was at the mellow where they were laying down lines in the middle of floors our maintenance crew and getting ready to put signage up in that school we created isolation spaces for symptomatic students we focused on hygiene we have hand sanitizer readily available we have more than four tons of hand sanitizer available right now in the buildings so that's not going to be a problem we can keep our hands clean we have a great volume of masks for folks to keep them safe if they do if they choose not to bring their own mask most people by the way so far our staff the vast majority of staff have brought their own masks so we've really only distributed a few masks for all the staff over the last couple of days but they are available and each office has masks available for folks we have provided we have purchased specialized ppe like gloves gowns safety glasses face shields clear masks for staff that for whom it's recommended so staff that are working closely with kids we have purchased those items we have desk shields also available so like plexiglas desk shields we have a couple of models already in-house we're going to have some more two more different ones um that i've been working on ordering today so we'll have lots of options for those folks who do have to work within the six feet recommended physical distance of kids there is a variety of ways to to protect themselves and obviously good hygiene proper ppe are the main components of that so those are some of the things that you know we have in place to to help the staff and i think that um it's something that as now staff are returning we've had a lot of administrative discussions about how this would work and now we finally have a big larger more collaborative group in place and we have some time here to get it all organized and understand okay who's going to need what to do to provide um you know a high level of service to kids so we're working with them now to do that so that's it's an exciting uh different sort of time i just want to add one more thing and then of course we can take questions but just as far as staffing as well as you know there are various leaves that folks can choose to take at this point we have 10 staff members tas as well as teachers that have put in for some sort of a leave but um those are all based on child care and some of them are just intermittent so we've allowed that um where they might say my child my my wife is working you know whatever days i need to be out tuesdays and thursdays so some of them are not the entire time or the entire week so this week we'll be now that we kind of had that organized we'll be meeting and looking at that and deciding how to help the principals cover those people um we've also had of course some retirements since all of this happened with tas et cetera so this week we're working on that to see exactly where we are with those folks and what we need to um add to the staffing or how we're going to cover those positions um i have to say with you know mr kiley of course he's been working really hard on the grants that we have been given but if people think this is cheap it's not um just to try we are basically trying to develop three education systems and shift our entire education system in in a couple of months that's been 350 years in existence and like the virtual platform again we had to hire this six additional teachers which is going to be through our grants their one-year positions but we have to be honest we're having a very hard time with our special education uh department to try to cover when when students are choosing for example virtual we only have so many teachers and they only have so many hours in the day and they're responsible for classrooms of kids so we have to be honest that's a big issue and and significant problem and we're going to be working on that really hard this we have meetings this week to now focus on that issue um so again if people think this is not this is just like the schools are closed because i've seen those comments before we're not closed and we're still teaching and we have i would say double the work um to try to meet the needs of our kids in various platforms um so that's what i and and i know we'll be meeting with town hall and and working through them and letting folks know the the work we're trying to do to meet the needs of all our kids so that's all i have for tonight uh why don't we go down miss wait go ahead um michelle deferred no go ahead go um you know first of all again like thank you for everything that you know your staff have done it's you know wow it's been it's been a journey um i think if i have anything as mr noon says living the dream [Laughter] you should have won that shirt tonight yeah do you want me to come back to you miss wait well i just have one quick question i guess about the the virtual learning academy has there been any you know as we're hiring those six teachers how will that work you know normally if you're they would have their you know special areas that they would go to so and i know there was some lack of certainty there has has that been kind of determined a little bit further or how that will be adjusted yeah we we put that right up front because because of the personnel issues and the scheduling we are not promising that the kids get that we are going to uh for example we were talking today that um i know miss roy is working on the specialist schedule and if folks have gaps in their um schedules we were just talking today they might be able to at least record some lessons like let's say it's an art lesson or something so but yeah we we just don't have the personnel right right to be honest okay and that's what i assumed and then just you know kind of you know i had you know some parents ask you know and about let's say you know they're anticipating they're hoping to stay in the remote is there any way that let's say something changes within the family that someone can jump back into the remote we go into hybrid they want to jump onto that remote i know we're trying to get everyone that wants to do that ideally making that decision now is there still that possibility let's say like october you know their health someone in their family's health changes can they make that jump at that point from like our remote system that we're like on to like our so let's say we are jumping onto hybrid can you jump into either ingenuity um you know the the middle school platform or our elementary platform is that something they can do at that point i know we want to get those folks you know started in the fall as you know right now but is that an option we again we talked again today but as far as like the element we see them a little bit differently because the elementary is basically we're saying there are teachers now there are it's our curriculum so there would be actually no need either way but what we want to be able to do is approach each situation on an individual basis because as you as you know especially if we're in hybrid and we've already let's say all our classrooms are full with the six foot capacity and we just can't shift them you know but but we will be able to approach each one on an individual basis i hope there aren't many but yeah but we are especially with the edge annuity platform i know the high school is hoping to get kids started right away because it's just that continuum of curriculum to make it and they could change at um as we said at semester break so that the grading period is over and shift in so there are there are nuances to the to the the situations yeah but i think that's uh you know i'm sure i'll have other questions later yeah i think that's you know we've done so much work and again and we i'm very grateful yeah thank you thank you mr news thank you madam chair um a couple of things a couple of general comments uh first and foremost and i agree with my colleague my hat's off to everybody for yeoman's work that's been done this summer uh i appreciate all the you know email updates and everything else as to to what's been going on and such um i did manage to catch uh part of the q a that you had on thursday with and that was excellent i thought it was you know well done type of deal and i did catch most of uh dr bremen's uh discussion on friday fantastic i mean he he laid it all out there and he had he had the answers to any and all questions and situations so i mean personally i appreciate his time without you know with the district giving us you know that that that information the only question i have in you know thinking about this type of deal more so for mr kylie i would think uh somewhere down the line all of a sudden everything clears and governor baker january 4th says okay we're good you guys can go back to full participation in school you know no six foot no guidelines have a nice day yeah probably not but that's wishful thinking but honestly in all serious how long is it going to how long would it take us to to basically get our classrooms back set i mean i know we've got all the storage containers on site and that type of deal but to reconfigure everything i guess is yeah we would be so excited that i'm sure we'd work all night i think it would take us several days and i think we'd likely have to have some sort of break in order to do it and but not to say that it couldn't incorporate a weekend but a weekend alone i don't think would be enough to actually reconfigure everything so we would probably require you know possibly two days of okay let's reset and then uh and plus the weekend time in order to be able to get everything back and set up yeah almost per se for argumentation take two snow days plus the weekend just i think that is a possibility yeah to get everything okay i was just you know i do my best it's a lot to do there's no doubt about it i mean i've seen what the classrooms look like and what they were before so yeah that's all i have madam chair thank you mrs yes um i'll start off with uh the calendar that was great uh you mentioned the the the error in there and and all of that but i didn't look and i'm just wondering um i've seen people post and i can understand the confusion they there have been comments i've seen although i've taken myself off of most social media platforms and it's been a breath of fresh air however uh i have seen some folks kind of snarky comments but understandable confusion around yeah that's really how can you figure that out and well you can if you take it step by step but i get it it's overwhelming for many um including myself you can see my notes it's a hot mess but i'm wondering if the calendar will be translated into our district's electronic calendar so that then a parent who would have chosen say notifications for dimelo or quinn or potter or the high school that they then could then choose for the time being cohort a dartmouth high school cohort b potter so that they could kind of extract that more easily for their families would that be something that we could look into doing on the district calendar like on the district calendar october 3rd it's coordinated right that's what you mean but that could yeah i mean it'd be a lot of work but i'm just thinking that might be something that i don't do that so i don't know and to me i don't do that so yeah sure why not yes of course someone can handle that you have to work with mr gala short see if there was a fast you know yeah there might be yeah if there is i think it might be helpful for a family to kind of translate that that information easily and if we could anything we could do to ease that but again only you know if it's possible print that and put it on my refrigerator yeah oh and the refrigerator and the car make it a magnet everywhere i go absolutely um i printed it in black and white so it's not doing me any good right now because they don't have color yeah right right what was that oh he's got it he has it in color so that's um so okay so that's just a suggestion if we can um let me see and of course i'm you know me i'm i'm like the ppe police over here and i just want to bring it back to we talked about miss andrew christopher and we brought like hit the ground running do we have our ppe where it needs to be for the people to access it right now even teachers even though they haven't necessarily needed it students aren't in and they're bringing their own masks but are those things like right hit the ground running in classrooms right now yeah okay no but they will be before there's kids here absolutely um but what we do have is so ppe for staff for doing what they're doing right now is available for them so masks and they're not working closely with with students right now so they don't you know need any of that additional equipment but we do have it all and we will distribute it all we are still configuring some things believe it or not we're still moving furniture um so we really don't want to do that until we're set um but we do have okay and i'm fine before students arrive yeah and in my this just came to me and you may have gone over this but is the ppe going to exist um in the classrooms or just say like in the nurses i i would hope not but i mean are they gonna is it gonna be everywhere i think it depends on what the ppe is being used for um but yes i i would expect that a supply would be nearby whoever needs to use it so um if particular staff members in a classroom sometimes need gowns or gloves or shields then it should be in the classroom it doesn't they shouldn't have to go and get it somewhere if they're regularly using it okay um one other one concern of mine uh that i've run into um so a family member of mine requires some personal equipment personal care equipment that gets delivered monthly and um part of that uh equipment is gloves and um the gloves haven't been coming with the other personal care products so um you know me i keep like i we have enough ppe and i trust you i you've done a phenomenal job i just i just know the reality of what happens that ppe and i just worry i i if we have three months six months i just ask that we keep ordering it and get to to eight months so that we know maybe in four months we need more i'm i'm highly worried about that um just because i i'm thinking of course of of familiar situations and um and those kids who just might not be able to kind of reset themselves and get a little frustrated and i'm thinking of bodily fluids and just frustration maybe spitting and some younger kids and touching and sticky and everything else i could list a million things that you might not already have in your you probably already have a list but but if at all possible if we keep ordering um it's just a concern of mine because it's so necessary uh and um anyway that's my little pp i agree yeah it's a concern of mine too i mean it it honestly is what i wake up in the middle of the night thinking about so um at 4 00 a.m when i but the first thought in my head is something about some ppe thing yeah that has been happening a lot i hate to say so um but yes no i i totally agree and um we have we have quantities in stock that i know we are fine for a couple of months and then um we we also need to learn to uh to understand how much we need absolutely you know and um this is a whole new a whole new adventure so and that's another worry i you know the over usage potentially not just of the students just of the over the over caution of staff that over time will get more familiar with their ability sort of understand when they need to do that versus hyper vigilant i guess yeah that's a whole other element um let's see i'm sorry of course you know the the special education piece i don't know where i wrote it but i'll just go off the coffee you know in normal times it is not uncommon for um for districts not just our district to secure staff for those related services speech therapists occupational therapists i mean that's rampantly under staffed in districts and oftentimes districts have to contract out to have those services so it's it's understandable but deeply concerning just knowing that many students haven't been able to access since march anything on a regular basis and while i'm i'm very optimistic for my own personal situation i can understand parents being quite concerned about the regression and i know there'll be more to come on that and i try to not alarm parents and let them know those things there there's guidance for that too but uh however we can i don't know if every every herculean effort we can make to to to make sure that those positions are are somehow filled um and to that note i don't know if this is possible and i'm just thinking of this so it might not even make sense but um i wonder if in by chance some of our partner collaboratives potentially if there could be some not changes to the iep but in this this time this pandemic time i wonder if it's possible that we sort of reach out to those folks or create some kind of agreement and and some of those services might be able to be facilitated you know not the placements change for these students but i don't know if that's even possible i uh but right all i can say right now is it's um high on our priority list as well we share your concern and um are not shying away from trying to solve the problem it's just right now we haven't solved it no so and it's not just us right we are uh in in very good company with this horrible problem so i i really thank everyone mr kylie i everyone thank you so much and that's all i have thanks so i will maybe take the middle path between miss amaral and mr nunes i'm not super optimistic but i will also say that i am concerned that we don't want to over order ppe because the last thing we want to have is four tons of hand sanitizer that go bad because i have hand sanitizer that goes bad so i mean given that money is tight i do think it is definitely a balance and that we need to learn and we don't want to necessarily order eight months because if we only need five months then we've got a lot of stuff that we pay for um so i just want to get some clarity i know parents have been asking about this um can we i know we're still sort of working on what the remote options are but can we sort of clearly publish those options for parents direct them because people are asking when do i have to make my decision by and i know they you know they did the survey and you're saying so i want to be clear they should finalize their decision with the principle of their building that's right do we have a date by which they need to do that because parents have been asking this like when do because we haven't also finalized what remote learning looks like so i'm just i think there's a lot of confusion about when do i have to make the decision and i want to know what i'm making a decision about so yeah i don't i know you can't give me an answer right now but if we could publish that that say this is what it looks like this is who you contact and this is the date you need to contact people by i think that would help a lot of parents in terms of clarity yeah we can do that and like i said um it really evolved a little bit more but this week we came to a i think a real clear place so great and i just think it just needs to be communicated a deadline set and a procedure for that it just needs to be set so parents know um to miss amarillo's points about the ab um from the high school and middle school perspective i think this is also going to get really tricky because not only do you have the ab cohort you have like day abcdef which i could never keep track of either so i don't know do we have to merge it with a calendar but even if we could be something so like sort of low-ish tech is to create like a twitter handle or a facebook post to p like the middle school school day right and it's like cohort a day e right because i think a lot of us have confusion about what day it is in those schools not just cohort a and b but now that we're adding cohort a and b with the days where the periods roll i think it would just be really helpful if there is a place that everyone can go and it doesn't we can low-tech it right we don't have to integrate it with our calendar it can be a facebook or twitter or something like that where people just know okay i get up i check that that's how i find out which class i show up to this morning at you know in the morning yep um the other thing that i had was um do we have plans for getting materials to kids um some of the classes like you know maybe you need math manipulates for lower levels i know my son is taking robotics with mr brodsky and i'm pretty sure he's probably going to need something to do that right so what is our plan do we have a plan for those classes where kids need stuff that they're going to have to work on at home either for remote or the hybrid to get that stuff to them that's what i asked last meeting yeah i know that each school is working on like i know a letter is going out from the elementary this friday those kinds of things so again a lot of that is coming from the schools i know they did some co cohort i've got cohort in the brain um chromebook dissemination today you know those kinds of things so it's little by little but um there's also going to be book bags at the elementary um but just to get back to what you asked so a lot is coming from the schools but just to get back to what you asked about the um signing up for the virtual one thing that did go out was an email to parents that did initially say they were interested so they have that information so we will we'll continue to post more updates up just what you're saying but you should have received if you're still uh if you didn't say you were interested contact the school et cetera et cetera so those are good points yeah that would be great and i think i think the other thing related to not just you know textbooks and then the specialized materials is parents really want to know like what do they need to buy um we are running into we start classes on campus on on wednesday we're running into supply chain issues so like a lot of our books and lab materials students are like uh i can't get my book for three weeks because just the supply chain is so disrupted so the sooner we can let parents know what they need to get the better because i am worried about hopefully there won't be too much specialized stuff and i know i have like folders and this and that all over the house here and there that i could reuse um but getting that to parents and letting them know i think would be really useful yeah i know that's coming out from the teachers as well but okay i guess we're just a little slow this year no we are but i i just know i think i think everyone is anxious right yeah yeah it's really a couple weeks before school is starting and of course people kind of want to know what they're what they're gonna need to get yeah so very good yeah other questions mary yeah actually if i could jump back in um you know i don't know if this dovetails exactly with this conversation but as we're kind of talking about like you know parents and readiness for the you know with their children in the mornings i know i had reached out to mr kylie and i brought this up before and i came up with you know several parents that i know the possibility of parents doing a checklist just even something that could be on their phone akin to what you do when you go to a pediatrician's office in the morning and just just every morning seeing like as a you know step to say like does your child have any of these you know you've already registered that child you know check off like which one of these this might be more from mr galesha but you know something that could then go on to like they have an aspen you know there's a red flag you know if something comes up it should be you know it happens at every medical appointment that i've gone to you know where i get like you just you have it there so it shows up the nurse can you know access it you know if she has a concern she can see you know it doesn't have to be something bus driver it's not you know not a ticket but just something that the parent actually is going through a checklist in the morning you know on their phone bing bing bing no no no no no send johnny off to school you know or oh wait you know johnny did have a fever last night and that would be a red flag so and again it can be wiped at the end of every week or you know something like that but i think it would just be helpful for parents just to have that and again we kind of talk about parents the accountability when it comes to sports as well i just think like that just to have that process one more thing at home um as a reminder if that's something that we can accomplish you know i think it would be helpful so we have that on campus and the problem is once you fill it out five times you're like yep yep you stop reading it after about you know day five because the questions never change um so i don't i don't disagree like having a checklist for people to refer to but requiring them to fill it out every day i don't i don't know i haven't seen the research on that whether it actually changes behavior or whether people just start you know i mean who reads a user agreement anymore right you just scroll on down and click the check um and that we found that happening sort of in our campuses and on campuses that people aren't reading those mr nunes yeah and i'm just wondering what you're saying are you talking about that checklist then gets sent to the school or that's that just stays with the parents of the school because i mean my only concern now becomes is now we start overloading the schools with you know you get a thousand here a thousand in the middle school three hundred and four hundred dollars almost go into like their aspen account you know something like that that would kind of go just you know float in and then just you know it would only come up if there was like a red line you know something that you know that was a red flag all right i'm just wondering if we're just again putting too much overload and emphasis we're taking responsibility off the parent and student and pushing it on to administration and staff okay that's my two cents no disrespect no it's okay i mean i i do think it might be good for parents i think we have a list of if you have those things don't send your kids to school but i don't know that we need to make it that you have to fill it out every day because then also imagine you've got five kids and you've got to fill out one of those like i would probably be ready that like every morning having to fill out ten questions for five kids can be a lot too right yeah so i'm just not sure if it's i'm just not sure if it's an extra burden that doesn't provide us with additional enough additional information i don't know i i mean yeah you're looking into it would go crazy right well it's a lot for parents to do and it's a lot for right for people to manage in terms of data and i'm not sure there's probably research on whether or not it changes people's behavior that we can maybe look at other questions or comments all right well thank you for all of your hard work it's been a lot of work i know there's still a lot we're doing the same thing we're starting classes tomorrow and there's like 50 000 questions that we still haven't answered um you know you're building the plane as you fly so right um that's right we have a little extra time with starting remote thank goodness thank goodness um i don't have any i don't think you have any other updates i don't have any report does anybody have anything else that they would like to add or share with us at this point in time do we have i'm my calendars aren't talking to each other do we have our next meeting yes september 14th at 6 30.

i'll turn it over to jorge thank you um the update i have on kobe is uh the district negotiations team has reached an agreement with uh the aea and afe bargaining units um you actually are going to be taking action on the aaa mou and we're currently working towards reaching an mou with our csca bargaining unit partners additionally the hr office continues to provide employees with related information with regarding leaves specifically new legislation that came from the federal government entitled h.r 6201 on the corona and the family's first coronavirus release act uh it's also noteworthy to mention that the district has launched a clova 19 screening tool for employees to complete prior to beginning their shift and that's something that we are continuing to to provide every morning and we've even received input and as changes happen we've modified that to reflect the changes and then there was alluded to earlier in the comments with regards to the work involved with staffing virtual academy and a lot of work has taken place there and work will continue to be dedicated to virtual academy and and i really want to applaud all the different stakeholders that participated in that process thank you okay um hello good evening my update um so i have a couple of updates um last spring we uh when we first went into school closure we had a process where we were distributing chromebooks and at the end of uh the school year um it was 5156 chromebooks that were distributed to uh students over the summer we continued to distribute chromebooks we had students who are participating in um summer program in think together and so we continued to do that and we would do it one or two times a week depending on the calls that came in as as we began to get closer to school just a few days really before school opened we saw quite a heavy volume uh in in calls and requests for for chromebooks so we changed the process uh we had had a process where we were taking appointments and uh we had walk ups and uh it was a it was a it was a great process but because of the demand um we really needed to change what we were doing so we actually shifted uh to a drive-through process and so um we uh we did that and we were able to uh distribute um another 1 353.

so in determining plan budgets uh we we are and the distribution of the funds and to address our learning continuity plan and and to prioritize our high needs students the districts sought to use a similar funding proportions to those in our lcap funding distributions in the lcap provided a base from which the district worked to develop the proposed expenditures for all funds directed towards implementing this learning continuity plan by using the lcap as a model the district maintained that important focus on our low-income students our emergent bilingual students and our students in foster care as well as addressing needs of students with disabilities experience and students experiencing homelessness the budget expenditures are our estimates based on current plans and it can be adjusted to meet the needs and the circumstances that face our students as our data may indicate the data will drive these decisions as as we're implementing this learning continuity plan and we can identify even now several programs and services and things that are new to azusa uh and using some of these funding for example purchasing of online instructional resources such as apex courses for the virtual academy and and as i mentioned the reading inventory for all students and some intervention materials and added materials that will help with online and distance learning for students with disabilities and obviously we've been on purchasing and making sure that we have enough devices and hot spots to to ensure all students have access to to our distance learning so those are some of the expenditures and and uh i'm sure you'll hear more as we have our covet 19 updates at each meeting so as we see the needs uh then we will create the systems and programs that are going to address those needs for our our students and families using that lcap model has helped us to develop these these expenditure budgets so before we transition to any questions or comments i i would like to note also that we continued to receive feedback and input on this document late friday we received feedback from the la county office of education we asked them to pre-review our plan the draft of our plan and so we'll be incorporating some of their uh recommendations that they made and furthermore last thursday night at our community at our community engagement initiative professional leading and learning network californians together facilitated by ms cruz gonzalez presented some of their suggestions and ideas on how we can incorporate and address the needs of our emergent bilingual students and so they had some some very useful tools that we're going to use to to see where we can add to and augment the the plan draft as it is now and and while there will be um these adjustments made the core content of our learning continuity plan will remain as shared here with you and and again i remind you that the california department of education really expects that these plans will shift and adapt as different circumstances arise and the unknowns that will inevitably hit us through the 2021 school year so at this point i will open things up to any questions or comments from the board prior to your public hearing uh i see you yolanda do you have a question uh so my my question is regarding the um so this is only for the uh 2021 school year and then it goes back to the regular alcap or um yeah first question yeah i'm sorry and then so if um if they are no longer in distant learning it will still continue even if it's in new year yeah the plan is for the 2021 school year but its particular focus was to um really focus on and highlight some of the things that we're doing because of covid19 um but even after we go back we're still going to have impacts and and effects from the school closures and so it will be a plan for our entire year and to answer your question about the lcap yes the the l cap for this year originally was set to be um presented to you in december and this plan um is replacing it while it's not an el cap uh it it is replacing it for this year and so throughout this year we will be working with our pack plus with our stakeholders and bringing to you information as we develop our next three-year lcap which will um will be developed and you'll approve in june thank you uh board member greer well i have a quick process question i think normally what we do with public hearings is after the staff presentation then we normally open the public hearing allow public comment close the public hearing and then have staff and then have the board discussion that's no that's the normal process so i'm okay doing it this way i'm just i'm just wanting to point out that's not normally how we do it okay that would anybody open the public hearing if they want motion do i have a motion to open the hearing you only need a motion to close you you actually oh okay and then we need a motion to close the public hearing okay i'm opening the meeting the public hearing on the continuity uh the public hearing on the learning continuity and attendance plan and i see adrian has a comment or board member grier i i do but i can wait until the public comment uh public hearing is closed all right um does anybody in the public would anybody like to make a comment at this point you can raise your hand nope are you seeing that i make a motion to close the public hearing thank you sheed uh second okay uh motion by board member sheila nin seconded by board member and discussion of any kind nope all right let's go ahead and vote oh no no i we don't need to vote oh i know you mean on the public hearing yeah yeah we're just closing the public hearing okay and then um board member greer thank you uh yeah jennifer can you can you speak to [Music] i see the list here i'm pulling it up i see the list and it talks about the priorities um prioritizing low-cut low-income students emerging bilingual students and foster youth um this is also the same you said for uh you know if and when we're returning in person is that also a part of this but okay um i'm so i'm curious to know can you clarify the percentage of our district that that then qualifies uh for you know within those categories because i would i would imagine that that's a pretty um significant amount and so how do you how do you prioritize you know whatever that number 80 percent or whatever that number is for yes 85 about 85 percent of our our students fall into the low income uh subgroup about 25 26 are emergent bilingual or english learners and that's overlapping i'm sorry and that would be overlapping right okay yeah these are what we call unduplicated pupils so they're only counted once when it comes to the total but i'm just giving you yeah we may have some emergent bilingual students who also uh are you know low-income families and so they're only counted once for accounting purposes but our percentages are this so yes it is overlapping and then our our foster youth i believe is is less than one percent two percent maybe and that you know that fluctuates and more than any of the others that's the number that tends to change even throughout the school year so yeah okay so the only thing i maybe would add then is um i i think from some of the feedback that i'm i'm getting and things that we're seeing you know that i would love to see part of that prioritization list is also younger you know younger students um because some of the you know some of the tk some of the kindergarten some of those younger students are having a much more difficult time engaging online than you know an 8th grader or or a 12th grader so um it would be great for that to also be you know part of that equation and that was some of the feedback that we did here that will be added it's just highlighting a little more our earliest learners yeah love it okay and i see that we did not uh finish the vote so yolanda i see has not voted is there a technical difficulty there's no there's nothing on my screen that has it okay i'll i'll say yes all right okay everybody else all right all right board membership yes all right cool all right it passes 5-0 okay any other questions or comments yeah i do but i think gabriella was about to ask questions when i when i talked about the public hearing so no okay okay oh no you're good all right so you have i do have a couple questions um eric jennifer so on the um on the presentation i noticed you didn't include the people and family engagement and outreach section um on your in the number of sections you reported and the powerpoint but it's did i skip that it's not in the powerpoint but it isn't i mean you have stuff written in the report oh my goodness can you just talk a little bit about that are you talking about this this the section in the powerpoint well i don't i mean you i think you reference the different sections of the template and you went from you went from pupil learning loss to our mental health to school nutrition and in between that i see people and family engagement and outreach yes thank you thank you yes and that that was my error i apologize so let me i will share a little bit with you about that section um this section will talk about um how we will be doing a tiered re-engagement a tiered re-engagement system where using our attendance records we have a process by which we'll be reaching out to students who are not engaging in the distance learning and put them through different tiers and pretty rapid succession uh the sb 98 states that students that miss three days or sixty percent of instruction that triggers this tiered re-engagement system and that's set up at our schools with the school site re-engagement team that begins the process and then as the student is worked through and and if gay engagement doesn't uh take place through the first few stages or tiers that moves then to a district level and so that is that is one of the ways that we are able to um to address that engagement and and make sure that we are are outreaching uh to our parents about uh about the requirements of being part of school and it's distance distance learning so and while the the prompt here does not really um address the the stakeholder engagement it really focuses in on the tiered re-engagement also just to know um as this is planning to as as we did in the spring continue to do a lot of parent outreach at our site levels as well as at a district level where we are beginning to plan for an azusa parent learning network where we'll have opportunities to to work with our parents and offer them opportunities to learn and how to support their students thank you appreciate that thank you i just want to give feedback on that because i do think that's a really important piece and i hope that um i hope that i would see it in the final lcp that i would see it reflected that we're doing that i mean i appreciate that the state is really giving us direction to focus on the re-engagement plan in this session right but i think that it's important for us to articulate um how the piece you know how we're planning how we really treat our parents as partners in terms of learning and feeling really about you know and and identify how we're going to be supporting those the parents yeah so you know to hear that we're going to have a learning network for parents i think that's something to articulate so along those lines this is just my overarching feedback um i think that i feel the document is i i really like the way it lays out sort of the at the high level but my concern is around um the way the budgeting is it's just we see these very large numbers with lots of different things and i heard you tonight reference specific things that we're investing in already and as a board member i think it's very important i'm going to be approving this is essentially a budget document for us because it's outlining how we're spending a significant portion of our supplemental concentration dollars in the federal funding it's really important as a board member to understand i mean if we've already made decisions about some of these investments i i would like to see that reflected um if you if it's not appropriate to be in that in this plan then it needs to be someplace i think arthur you guys have a you know i really appreciated with our lcap that we got a line by line spreadsheet that showed this section we're going to be spending this money because i really can't tell and i even since i see descriptions that are similar in different areas it makes me i don't understand whether there's replication in terms of the dollars that are shown in these budgets or whether those are all different expenditures so i think i mean and and i also just want to say i understand that obviously we're going to have to be flexible right and so whatever we whatever we approve this month does not mean it's going to be set in stone but i think that if we do have clear expenditures that we've already committed to or already have taken or are planning to then let's articulate that so that we as a board understand right so so i'm you know i'll leave it to you to figure out how the best way to to to show that so that it's part of what we approve on september 30th um because even i'm like you know i hear you talking about apex classes or this kind of uh or a reading assessment um piece that we're going to be adopting right like i think that's important for our community to be articulate or to be public somehow so transparency people know um the one piece that i don't see in here that i that i'm just gonna that i'm just gonna put out there in terms of a board member is that i really there's been a lot of research a lot of um a lot a lot of information coming out around the importance on of one-on-one tutoring especially when addressing learning laws and there's examples of districts across the state who are investing dollars in in making in in giving opportunities for families to take advantage of one-on-one tutoring right and obviously that's an investment right because we would be hiring tutors to work with students and i know we've gotten feedback from different parents around their individual students struggling whether or not they fit in one of the groups that we're focusing on um and so i would like us to i would like to understand in terms of those you know what kind of opportunities are we planning to give families in terms of one-on-one tutoring and are we going to carve out a budget for that that that's going to be available for families to use are we going to have a system in terms of identifying which students we think we need one-on-one tutoring um i mean i appreciate that we're putting a lot of effort into our initial instruction right and first first best instruction is always the best right but but i think we know that under these circumstances um that other that other individual attention is going to be so important so that's just the one piece that i didn't see in here that i'm just putting forward to think about let's let's find a way to make sure that this is in the plan okay so those are those are my pieces of feedback otherwise i think it's it's a great start um and i know this is a public hearing um but hopefully we'll see some um some additions by the time we adopt it at the next board meeting yes thank you remember ariana's hi yes i had a question on fap and um i i would like to to know how many students are reclassified each year you know so we'll start with last year and the year before on just to get some data to be able to because we are starting this new um this new learning continuity and attendance plan that is a little bit different just so i just want to be able to track that data moving forward and if that could be and it doesn't have to be on this friday packet it could be the next friday packet is fine i know you just have to do some digging um for a couple years so thank you okay is there any more discussion all right we will move to item 10.3 certification of signatures resolution number 20 and motion 2 move certification of signatures resolution number 20.

what it is is it is an additional tax of 3.5 for people that make um it is a tax let me put this correctly it is taxed for a single person on the income that they earn over 250 000. so if a person earns 250 000 or 250 1 000 they would pay 35 in tax just on that thousand dollars over the 250.

um capital we're ending in 10.21 percent and adjacent ways is 95.8 percent um for the current fiscal year right now we're at 3.59 percent in m o uh 7.39 in capital and sixty point eight two percent in adjacent ways do we still have bills outstanding for adjacent ways yes so that sixty percent will probably go down significantly no the sixty percent is what we have after we've encumbered what we owe to the town okay yeah okay so yep so are you saying that this is the carryover the eight hundred eight thousand yep okay so with that adm we should be should correct and it really depends on what the stabilization grant comes out to be but the the stabilization grant should be i won't say cover all but most of that um adm loss and i think we already accounted for part of that carryover i think maybe 400 000 so that we've already accounted for in our budget in the current year okay so okay yeah because we didn't realize the carrier was going to be so high no especially in today's world all right item seven a through f is our consent agenda if someone would like to make a motion since this is an action item to approve the consent agenda i'll make a motion to through the consent agenda oh in favor fantastic item eight another action item this is the approval of our personnel report there is a supplement um so please make sure you get both the supplements actually longer than the original one we added a bunch of coaches that is what has to do with it we have looks like seven new classified i'm sorry six new classified we have a couple resignations we have three classified changes a new classified sub and uh looks like two four six seven eight coaches great any other questions i have a question on the supplement number six uh-huh she right she left her position was never filled and now she's coming back to fill her position at the same rate of pay and everything okay so without any other questions i'm sorry annie okay all right there's still a motion on the floor so all in favor aye aye perfect item 9a um selection of our asba delegate all right there's actually this job does we'll do two things um and i think annie has been to uh doing some of this at the law conference that is supposed to take place next week which is not taking place in person it's actually taking place virtually at the end of the week they had a delegate that approved the legislative agenda for asba there is also another job that this delegate would do and then there's going to be a third job that we'll talk i think it's in the next agenda item that would help choose the board members for the asba at the december meeting it has not been decided whether the december meeting is going to take place or not the september meeting will take place virtually so it's not something that you would need to go to so um annie i don't know if you want to describe i know the experience was a little bit interesting when you did your your delegate this is a different experience because you're not in person but you want to kind of maybe share what that was uh yeah i did this i know it was really interesting it was there was a lot of back and forth um going you know hearing everybody's different opinions on everything and then voting you know uh even the wording you know there's lots of people that had different opinions on the way that things should be ordered so definitely different if we don't have anyone that is doing it virtually i guess i would do it all in favor thanks guys i really appreciate it well i don't think it would be fair since i'm not going to be here next year to take that job on well and i guess we should ask is anyone do you have to register for the conference is there anyone you know foreign and yes i have to do that first thing tomorrow not for the whole conference just for that one event yeah okay all right so unfortunately it is an action item and we have to vote you in annie oh great okay so if someone wanted to make the motion to have annie be our delegate that'd be fantastic i'll make the motion to select annie mortensen as our delegate for the asba all in favor aye aye are you an i annie all right thank you item 9b is proposed 2021 political agenda and delegate assembly process so this is actually the information that she would vote on it's not a whole lot of different than what it has been in the past maximize state funding for competitive salaries to attract recruit retained teachers there's a revision requested for the school finance formula fully fund full day k advocate to preserve and protect the voters intent of prop 301 index district additional assistance for inflation provide funding for new space so that has to do with asba eliminate unfunded mandates and administrative burdens return these seg funds to the primary tax levy and actually that's about as far as i probably want to say because there's a lot more but it was in the agenda and this is something that again hasn't changed a whole lot since uh you went through this process last year okay uh is this an action item do we need to make the decision this evening you do okay okay because actually i believe that the event is next weekend or like in a week and a half all right well does anyone feel really strongly on any of these that you would like to put forward as like the very first or is this the one that we i think you just improved the whole thing together fantastic even better you want me to make that yes approve the arizona school boards association's draft 2021 political agenda great all in favor aye aye aye i'm sorry i thought it was the one that we chose like for and so you just do the whole thing okay all right item 9c is yavapai county delegate now so the last one was for the asba statewide stuff this is for a the county wide selection of a county director so what happens is the whoever is selected to be the delegate this is actually there's going to be a county meeting and the county meeting is on october 28th it has already been said that it's going to be a virtual meeting so at that meeting there will be an election to determine who in yavapai county and it has to be another school board member will serve as the as the um county director and they actually serve on the asba board and so the only thing this person does is represent chino val the chino valley governing board in the selection of that person they are not on the asba board so that's what this delegate does oh well i'm pretty sure i guess i'll volunteer for this one well would anyone like to nominate someone to uh be our delegate and then we can have a motion and vote for them well i think penny is a good choice because she's going to be here however annie kind of sounds like she wants to do it so we could give her the opportunity that's what i was thinking okay would you like to make that motion thank you i'll make a motion to approve annie morgansen as our voting delegate for the comey board meetings asp accountable all in favor aye aye and you're it thank you annie that was with enthusiasm yes thank you item t-10a cvhs english learner recommendation cindy okay so the district is asking for approval from the governing board to allow us to have our high school english language learner students attend all four days a week during hybrid rather than just their two assigned days during hybrid and ms karate who is the district el coordinator and principal heidi wolf and i have met a few times about this and our rationale for making the request is our high school el students are really struggling with the at home portion of instruction due to language barriers and it's particularly important for the high school kids because the high school kids are seeking credits for their classes and trying to graduate and so what we what we figured out was about half the kids attend hybrid on monday wednesday about half attend on tuesday thursday from our language learner group at the high school which would mean that miss karate would have the other half of those kids on the opposite days so it would always be a pretty small group of kids at the most you might have seven or eight kids each of those days but it would allow her not only to provide the instruction for the students in english language acquisition but it would allow her to help the students with their other coursework because they're struggling with things like their math or their history or whatever and one of the things that really put this on our radar was the number of teachers reaching out to her because the students were having so much difficulty the other thing i just wanted to note was that many of our students who come from spanish-speaking homes haven't been speaking english since they haven't been in school and so it's created they've lost some of their language skills so it's created an additional barrier for them so we're asking that those students be allowed to attend four days a week during hybrid two during their normal hybrid schedule two for assistance with language skill remediation and that they also be allowed to ride district transportation all four days any questions all right this is an action item would anyone like to make a motion please to approve item 10. i moved to for the approval of chino valley high school el students to attend four days per week during hybrid instruction and approval for chino valley high school el students to write district transportation to and from schools each day during hybrid instruction all right all in favor hi aye you item 10b revised hybrid instructions so the actual information that's related to this is behind the next item which is the hybrid instructional model scenario 2.

so if we if we um lost less than 650 students we would be somewhere between 98 and 100 but to date this is to date we have lost 900 students so therefore we are planning on revising our budget down that we that we gilbert public schools own so that reduction will be about 2.5 million dollars so we have 200 thousand dollars of karezak money available and that we know we need to reduce our our budget down by two and a half million dollars so we still have 2.3 million dollars to come up with to balance our budget for the current year so is that is that clear okay sorry one more thing so the enrollment stabilization grant is that to get us back to the 98 number so those are those are tied together that's what that's the mechanism of getting to that 98 that's correct okay thank you so um so staff has been looking at so we based upon the student accounts today um you know i had on the slide that we're looking at applying for 30 million dollars of the enrollment stabilization grant and that's relevant to that 27 000 students from 33 000 and the 5 600 students to the 134 so it's all related to all of that so we are going to be applying for about 30 million dollars of that enrollment stabilization grant to get up to your point to get up to that 98 funding of last year's weighted student count so just wanted to make sure that the board was aware of all that and so as part of that as part of the enrollment stabilization grant it is a federal grant and it was identified that we need to find covid related costs associated with that enrollment stabilization grant but they were going to be very open and and flexible about how we did that one of the things they mentioned was revenue losses so that we could if we could show where we had this much money in this particular fund last year and or in 19 and in 20 it decreased substantially we're able to apply for that delta so to date we've identified about five million dollars of revenue loss at the same time we're looking for all those expenditures that we could apply for the 30 million dollar enrollment stabilization grant and that's all very complicated and i'm very sorry but it's it's a little bit of a shell game at this point to try to figure out um where we're going to go from here and that grant by the way the grant application is due friday this week so is there are you confident is that a best case scenario that we could get 30 million or are you confident that or how do you feel about that i mean could we be looking at even a less you know less amount than that which would affect our our budget so i i i believe i believe the governor when he says that we will be funded to no less than 98 of the prior years weighted student count how we're going to get there i don't know so one of the things i think that we did anticipate as a group all of my peers was that we would just be funded to worst case we'd be funded through equalization at the 98 percent of weighted student count but then there was the enrollment stabilization grant funding that was provided from the federal government and so so the state of arizona is using that first and i believe early on the governor identified some of the rainy day funds as being able to hold schools and charter public districts and charter schools harmless so i believe that not sure whether the enrollment stabilization grant will meet the full 30 million dollars but i do believe that we will have the funding in some way shape or form to meet that 98 percent of last year's weighted student count thank you i think that's all i got thanks nice job thank you next don for communication good evening dr dr santa cruz governing board members dr mccord um this is really just a summary of what we've talked about at the previous meetings um right now with regards to communication we're really focusing on back to campus just to reiterate some of what the principles shared today the communications at the campus level have been phenomenal and we've been monitoring from them from districts they've been very impressive communicating with our various stakeholders at this moment is definitely challenging and i greatly appreciate all of the expertise that the campuses have shown um some clear things that we just need to support our families with right now one of which is making sure um ms frost mentioned it is making sure that all of our families have accurate contact information and infinite campus as that feeds into blackboard which is our mass notification system luckily we have just gone through an annual update and all of our campuses have been working really hard within blackboard there is a report that can be generated to show how many emails are incorrect so i looked at our report for all of our campuses today and we are at below 0.4 bad emails which is phenomenal given the number of parents we have in our district so the campuses have been doing a wonderful job of course right now it's really important that we can communicate accurate and up-to-date information with all of our families so we'll be continuing to remind our families of that that if their contact information changes it's really important to get that updated infinite campus as soon as possible we're also constantly reminding our families right now that they should be expecting and looking out for regular communications from district and their campus as all the key information is shared and a lot of that information like has already been mentioned is around educating our families and how they can support their students with regard to expectations for return to campus so for example in our weekly district newsletters to families we're sharing uh what does that daily health assessment look like here's a downloadable pdf also you can view on the website video content about how to go through that daily health assessment video content on five easy steps to washing your hands correctly what families can do to support the efforts to educate their students on best practices for returning to our campuses we also have face covering information including the policy and the protocols prominently posted on the website and we continue to direct our families to that information via emails newsletters and of course uh posts on social media that's all i have i i have a question um what about our families that don't have english as their first language how do they get a translation or what are we doing to address those issues thank you for that it's a really important question i will say that because information is coming out so quickly it has been a real challenge to ensure that all information is translated however we've worked hard to identify key pieces of information to ensure that that is translated so for example the daily health assessment that is on the website is in both english and spanish also we're very lucky with our website so with the new district and school websites that we have it has a built-in google translate feature when we launched the websites we did work to test how good that translation was and it's around 98 accurate so that means that any uh content that is posted on the website not pdfs but the actual content that's on the page families can click that google translate and it will translate so because of that that is another reason as to why when we send out any communications to our family we also post it within the body of the text on the on the web page so that the translate feature is there it's not ideal i have high hopes for improving our translation services going forward okay thank you any other questions okay thank you thank you just to recap um what we've been doing since august 25th until going through this friday uh working on our phase in preparation as you've seen um this evening there's been a ton of preparation going into place we want to do this as well as possible when our students show up on tuesday september 8th we'll be delivering the hybrid model uh assuming the metrics are holding strong from the 8th through the 18th and then planning for a september 21st 5 day a week in person delivery model again hoping that the metrics are there if they're not we will either continue with hybrid or if it goes backwards from there we will have to continue online keeping a positive mindset about this and assuming that our dates will be intact but we also know that things can happen but um we'll talk about the positives moving forward hopefully that we won't have to address those and again we'll just continue with uh communication with our families and discuss the in-person and the online delivery models that we have available for our families that's it thank you for listening to us i know it's a lot of information but i think it's important that you as board members our community understands that we have been doing a lot to prepare for opening up the school again and as you can see from what our principles displayed they are extremely excited and want to do the very best they can for their students their staff and their families thank you dr mccord and just a reiteration they're in lies as we observed and listened to the presentations from all of those individuals who made themselves available this evening therein lies the rationale and the reason for why this wasn't a turnkey operation and why we needed the time to get ready for any kind of reopening and so at least for me and on behalf of my fellow board members i i would just offer a great amount of appreciation and gratitude for the work that's been done with the understanding that nothing is perfect we're doing the best we can and i think this is indicative of that so we thank you dr mccourt and the team and we thank the teachers and staff as they prepare for this eminent opening in whatever form and all of the work you have done will do and will continue to do on behalf of the students and the families of this district board members any additional commentary i'd like to add something also dr santa cruz if i may i really appreciate this i think all of you know that this is something that's i've been very worried about and i'm going to continue to be worried about it just because of everything that's gone on um but the the amount of work and thought that's put into this by all of you all of this staff and everything is is beyond anything that i could even be more grateful for i just i would like to just add something personal um i as you know i spent a lot of time in montana this summer and the city that we were in it used to be a mining town and now it is basically the hospitality industry and as a result of that when they were closed down during that period of time when they reopened in in may one of the things that i noticed everywhere we went was no one wanted to close down again and as a result of that people were working so hard trying to get keep things sanitized keep the social distancing because they what they relied on that job they didn't want to close down again and it was really impressive to see the cooperation in this one community of people wearing their masks cleaning things up socially distancing and i think that's what we can have here in this district and i would encourage all of our principals to have that let's make sure we don't have to close it down again attitude which i think you do and if we can just keep portraying that to our community that if everybody works together and does what we need to do that that is the right thing then you know the sky's the limit i agree thank you for that anyone else i just would like to express my gratitude for you know we have a number of people who presented tonight but we know that behind them are hundreds thousands of people working to make this all work and i would like to thank each of them wish we could do it individually but we're supposed to social distance we won't and just very much looking forward to having students back on the campus tuesday dr sasha i just wanted to add some thank yous i mean i this is this was a hard decision but it's a decision for our entire community we had a lot of people that came came in and spoke and gave their thoughts not one of them were over the age of 60.

so grand total of six thousand five hundred and nine chromebooks uh so far um we continue to um take uh if anybody needs a chromebook uh they're still calling the district office we are still taking calls for anyone who is having you know if they have any difficulty or they need some tech support um we are providing that support as well so um we're feeling we're feeling really great about that we feel that um our our students have those devices and um and we are we're in good shape the second um update that i want to provide is that uh you know that um right before school started we hosted a virtual um professional learning uh conference for uh teachers uh just providing different breakout sessions and support uh to help teachers begin to launch their distance learning plan since uh since that time in opening school we have our team of teachers on special assignment our tosa team we have seven tosas who have been providing a continuous stream of support through live sessions and they they have a network going where they take turns so um ptosis are providing support to teachers um with lesson planning and helping them connect to uh their digital resources but what they're also doing is they are holding live a google meet from uh like eight to about three three thirty every day where it is staffed by the teachers on special assignment so anytime we have a staff member that has that immediate question they can just pop in and out and get that immediate support um we've all had the opportunity to just to jump in um and and you know and listen to you know the questions and the support and um and i've seen the just the relief on on teachers faces when um if there's something that they're not quite sure about they have a question something they've you know run up against or they're not quite sure how to access something to be able to have somebody right there right then to help and support them our team has just done a phenomenal job and it's really been a brilliant idea of theirs um to be able to offer this kind of support and just continually how can we support you what do you need how we can can we connect you and um so just um big shout out to uh to the tosa team for thinking of this and really responding to that need to really help um our staff be able to get what they need at the moment all right and for the business team as of friday we officially um delivered our first round of pp e to the sites which included um face coverings um for both um students and staff um that would be cloth and disposable as well as hand sanitizer we are currently installing all of our signage for entryway and exit way as well as plexi shield and dividers and spaces where plexi shield would not suffice we're also working in collaboration with our team to develop our hybrid model that we will be presenting to our covet 19 team for feedback this friday and yes that's it [Music] okay um i'm sorry my allergies uh time for questions and i see the uh board member grier yeah a couple things first that's incredible uh what you shared uh dana about the tosa team that's that that's that's phenomenal i love love the sound of that and i can i can i can just imagine all the ways that that's useful and extremely helpful so i love that that uh that idea that innovative thinking um kind of in in line with that i i um can you speak to what what we're do doing uh in regards to teachers as as this is new you know i i think arthur you said that or jorge one of you said that this is like the first year for every teacher um and and with that in mind since since that is the case and there are new ways of doing things is there space for teachers to share with each other strategies that they're doing and and what isn't what is working and what is specific to on you know some of some of the online uh distance learning interactions um and and if so what is the frequency um that that that that happens yeah thank you for uh for that question so i uh also failed to mention um that the the tosas are also hosting uh they do grade level meetings right so anytime they're like for example uh preschool teachers right so they'll have a specific time in the afternoon and invite the teachers to come and they'll talk about um you know sharing best practices uh they'll talk about um let's say for example they just met to talk about the drdp which is the assessment and and really thinking about how we're going to um do that in a virtual environment um there's a lot of nuances that with that with our younger learners and so um our teacher on special assignment uh jenny lee our director of early childhood education uh brought teachers together to really have those conversations to talk about what will work in those situations and um and get their input on that so um i would say opportunities um probably i would say i would say about maybe twice a week or so just specific specific grade levels to come together to talk about strategies planning i talked to principals regularly and uh you know hearing okay now that we have you know our grade level teams together um how are we getting together and talking about how we plan um i've also today i talked to a principal about some um opportunities for um cross-planning with um with with schools that's one of the benefits i think that we have seen in terms of with this distance learning um we are able to instantly uh reach across the the district and be able to say hey we've got you know um a fifth grade class and we have other teachers for other fifth grade teachers that want to plan um and so we're seeing more collaboration more opportunities for that as well i don't know why we didn't think of that before we could have we could have done that right so this has been an opportunity for us to be able to really use um you know uh kind of this virtual space um and quickly too right we don't have to drive and we can get together and do that so um these are opportunities for us to continually do that it also we have on mondays this is our our time for not only staff minis but for those professional learning communities and so as we um as we begin to put our assessment plans in place and as we begin to um to think about how we're going to use what kinds of assessments that schools will use in terms of common formative as well as our district assessments this is an opportunity for us to really dig in deeply and collaborate across across the district to especially serve to serve those students who need the most support for example our language learners so i would say we have you know regular and frequent opportunities but i think even more so now um with plcs and thinking about how we can you know again bring grade levels and schools together so um they are the tosa team is working with uh grade level teams uh throughout the week in addition to um the the tosa live support and what they do is they rotate so they will have um they will have some of the ptosis in the life support while other ptosis are maybe working with a grade level or they're reaching out individually and supporting teachers as well um and we have teachers too that are also um you know maybe they are in a new grade level and so they need that immediate support in terms of how they connect to the technology um and and that as well i hope that answers it yeah that can i just build on that just a two quick points um i think that that spirit is alive and well and i think i think part of it is is again is is the situation uh that we're in and by what what i mean by spirit is the spirit of sharing and and supporting each other so just as a quick example we have a weekly general session uh that we do every two weeks where we invite the entire staff to get updates on what's happening uh at the district um and so at our last one like somebody asked a question like hey i'm having a trouble with this and then just teachers just started jumping in like how about this how about this how about this uh that's so that's one and then number two um dana uh puts out an email every friday and i have noticed that there she also highlights um strategies that teachers in our district are currently using and so maybe the teacher will create a video or share a document and that's that's being shared out to the entire organization just a couple more examples on that yeah thank you and and i love hearing that i i truly believe that moving forward as we're just learning you know new ways of doing things shared innovation is going to be key and so when when uh there are teachers at you know various school sites in various grades that are learning better and newer ways of doing things providing space and opportunities for that to be shared acros like we said across school sites and and you know cross subject content areas i i think that's just that's just going to be key to figure out some of these uh strategies because we know that this is new for everyone so i so i i i love hearing that the the last question i had was in regards to textbooks um can you just give an update on on where we are with that and the distribution of textbooks or online uh you know pivoting to online materials um what is that looking like now so um yeah so we spent the first uh several days uh getting all the student accounts and as you can imagine we have most of our curriculum is online most of our curriculum has uh different platforms depending on if it's elementary or if it's secondary and so we have spent a lot of time making sure that all of our students have their accounts which they do um one of the pieces is uh is that in order for us to do that the students all have to be in aries in those classes because they are connected to those rosters so it's a pretty fast uh and furious turnaround with that so uh the uh secondaries have all done their uh texture test textbook distributions uh the high schools in the middle schools have already completed that actually had a meeting today with all of the elementary principals to talk about our steps and how we're going to coordinate that so um we were able to meet with the principals the resource teachers and so they are uh working on their plans on how they're going to do that as well and then the other piece too with that is also um the piece with the virtual academy right so um so all of those nuances that come together so they are putting together their plans for me and we should have those uh in a couple of days to be able to figure out exactly when they're going to do it and how they're going to do it so we had a good meeting today to talk about that okay i have a question and mine is kind of frivolous but um if we can get an update on the cif and our sports curriculum of what yeah i mean this has been a blessing at least our football team gets to play on the new fields this year where they would have had to put off and not till next year but um yeah i just like basically to just have an update on what cif is doing as far as contact supports and things like that so parents ask us we have that information and next would be board member arianas hi yes i it's exciting thank you for sharing that 6 500 chromebooks have been distributed now with that being said how many hot spots have have we distributed are they separate are they in the chromebooks they are they're separate and so um i will i will get you a count um for your for your weekly uh packet um roughly it's a little over with the hot spots um about 200 i want to say we also have tablets that are out as well that are connected to wi-fi um we have another um another shipment that is coming in um really any minute it's uh it's in transit and and the idea with this is that um the hot spots are um we're using those for families who are not able to have a permanent connection and we're also using those until we have families um that we are providing that permanent connection so they'll use a hotspot in the meantime until they're actually connected to either spectrum or frontier we also have some other um other service providers depending on where families live that that need that okay and the alignment of curriculum across schools is that happening because i hear you saying you know the toasters and um i've heard from from teachers that toasters are doing a great you know but within that school um what about across the schools is that happening how does that what does that look like yeah so we have um we have our uh our our district board approved curriculum that we use for all grade levels so for example uh we use uh wonders and maravias for elementary everyday mathematics 4 for elementary math we have collections would be for our secondary ela cpm and secondary mathematics and so we do have our curriculum that is across the district we have um curriculum maps um that really help uh teachers in terms of the um i want to say the pacing in terms of you know how the the scope and sequence of the curriculum um the ways in which that uh that teachers use the strategies and different things that does that does vary um you know depending on the teacher but we do use the same curriculum uh in all of our schools i guess my question was are our teachers talking to each other from other schools um about the curriculum yeah tools like different things that they're doing and stuff to be able to to yeah so um and also and part of that right is when the ptosis will hold a um like a grade level planning they'll say okay from uh you know from two to three today we're gonna you know fourth grade teachers can come for language arts or mathematics and so depending on uh you know which toast is facilitating that um and they will go through and talk about um you know uh launching their calendars for example in connected for wonders or for uh uh they'll talk about um assessments that are coming up in the curriculum so yeah they do a lot of a lot of planning a lot of support that is coordinated uh across the across the district so and they've been they've been doing that work um for quite some time and so um you know over the last several years since we've been every time we've adopted a curriculum we've had lots of opportunities for that collaborative planning um and the same thing that we continue to do uh for example last year we um we adopted secondary history social science this year um it was our was our launch with um with science uh for um tk12 so lots of opportunities again for teachers to be able to collaborate professional learning will continue we do a lot of that when we have a new curriculum when we launch a new curriculum we have lots of opportunities for teachers to be able to work together in across sites uh and depending on whether it's secondary elementary so and really and again led by the tosas as well and we do um we do have our publisher partners come in um we we did that uh last spring when we were launching um we also had our science uh publishers um during our virtual uh support for success conference and we had uh we had sessions all day long for people to choose and to come in and um and just really kind of you know get their feet wet and explore the curriculum and you know look at how it's uh what the components are and the technology um and so we just will continue to offer that support um and again facilitated and led by the ptosis but you are doing a phenomenal job thank you board member cruz gonzalez thank you um yeah i have a couple questions um the first one being around just information that's going to be reported out um you know that it's going to be aggregated and that we get like at a district level so that we can understand what distance learning is happening a couple examples would be around like what is our attendance like um you know at both at site and district levels and looking at student groups and their attendance their attendance levels i mean attendance rates as well another example would be around how much synchronous instruction students are actually getting i i appreciate that we're going to be adopting an mou that has um that has like the at least that like the sort of the floor of the the number of instructional minutes but but really i'm having a clear understanding of how much how much face time students are getting with with teachers whether it's whole group or small group instruction um so um things like that i mean those are just examples that i'm putting out there so what i think what i'm requesting is um getting a clear understanding of what the district is proposing in terms of what kind of data to collect um and aggregate that can then be reported to the board um at the board level so that we can understand how distance learning is going um so that's request number one um well i'll just pause there and see i mean have you if you have any um thoughts responses to that or if that's something i should just look forward to yeah um and i and i one of the ways to be able to really take a look in terms of um that synchronous is to take a look at some of the schedules so um we've already been collecting uh some samples of those um and in conversations that i've had um with teachers um they're you know um they they're trying different things right so i'll get a schedule and and then i'll have conversation with uh with with teachers around okay i'm trying something else and um experimenting with breakout groups and whatnot so actually um i have a sample for you just a little sample that i've um i'm putting in your pack for this week to just get an indication of kind of what it looks like um but definitely we will be collecting um uh the schedules because we do want to be able to see in terms of you know the synchronous and asynchronous and we do have to make sure that we are um you know we are meeting um sb98 with that as well so we will take a look at that as well and make sure that you get that information um and then also with the attendance piece and the aggregate of the different subgroups so i just want to be clear i mean i appreciate having artifacts right that shows us different schedules i mean that i would say uh probably creativity in terms of sort of figuring out and how to the best way to deliver instruction but i also am really requesting aggregate information that's collected that we that we just report on a regular basis so that we can track as we go along right i mean i think you see some examples of there's places where they're like districts are reporting on a weekly basis what their enrollment it looks like um and my preference is to be able to make sure we look at it by subgroups so that we're all student groups by work so that we're really digging deep into you know who really is coming and who's not so there's that piece um and then my second request is around um um the the group that you're convening um i just want to get a sense in terms of timeline um um and i appreciate that you're going to be you're going to have feedback from laco as you're developing this but um i just want to get a sense in terms of timeline what you're thinking in terms of being able to develop um develop recommendations um and whether this is going to be like a final at the end recommendations or recommendations as we go along um because i mean as we see the state is already changing right first there was this potential elementary waiver that could happen once once certain criteria is met now there's a new there's a new executive order out or waiver making it clear that you can have small groups of students come into schools like glendale's doing right where it's not with it's not for instruction but they have small groups coming um and with an adult and they're doing their learning at the school campuses supervised you know especially for families where they cannot they don't have that kind of ability to do that at home let's say because two parents are working right so those are the kinds of things that i'm hoping that we can explore and discuss and maybe see if their feasibility went as things roll out right so that one just came out right and so let's i haven't heard a conversation around are we are we thinking about trying to bring some students back on campus especially some of those student groups that that dana talked about or you know i know i heard another example another district where they're really focusing on the kids that just disappeared last spring right and those are the ones that they're inviting back to come to school in classroom supervised within with with with some kind of adult where they're actually logging in with their teacher so those are the kinds of so that's that i mean that's what i'm asking in terms of like the group that you're convening really like where where do you think some of these pieces fit in there and then what is the overall timeline yeah this is part of the the the new and the and the unknown uh because things do change uh rapidly uh so for instance um like the glendale model right that was around quote unquote child care and then you just had last week i believe the green light on asus and 21st century uh grants and so we are uh having those conversations with our asus partners uh thing together uh and how how do we how do we how do we move on that and so it's gonna be it's going to be uh we're gonna have to be extremely flexible uh to pivot one way or or the other um we we do have um the urgency uh to get through uh these 19 pages of guidelines um our understanding talking to laco last week is that those guidelines are going to be updated here soon and so you know how do we stay on top of on top of those things so i don't have a timeline per se i do know that we want to move we want to move quick we want to make sure that that we're getting through these 19 pages and that we have an understanding of how to to move uh to move forward but to your point at the same time as new things come our way and new opportunities uh make theirs make themselves available we don't want to say well we're on pause for that because we're working on this we it's kind of like simultaneous like a parallel uh road to those things so again just as one example already having conversations with our asus partners uh about uh in-person uh support for for students and yeah yeah uh board member okay there you go i just saw that board member pena yes um i have a question regarding the compliance team uh the compliance team you mentioned parents and staff uh is it similar to the imaginary team that you had uh first question but the second question is are they different people are they the same so um every every bargaining uh partner uh selected there are six people and then reported those so for instance a face said these are our people csca said these are people aea said these are our people uh for administration actually half of the team um all of our bargaining partners and and and us uh agreed that half of that admin team that it should be one elementary one minute one middle school and one high school principal so we agreed on that we didn't we didn't name who we just agreed that three of those should be those and so then we we decided on who the other three members would be for that so we we honored the agreement and then for the parents um i took care of that portion so i sent uh a communication to uh d-lock superintendent parent superintendent and parent roundtable and there's one oh and pac plus so send out an email saying hey we're looking for six parents uh this is the commitment the commitment is every other friday for an hour and a half and uh put that communication in english and spanish and said that the first six parents that are willing to do it and can do it uh would join on the team so to your question no it is not identical to the reimagination team um this is different now are there people on this team that were also on that team yes but it's not it's not a carbon copy of it okay and my second question was regarding um probably this is for dana um on the um classified employees are they um instructional aides if they're working with students and i also probably know in the offices things are different even i'm sure taking attendance and things are they being trained also on the news yes so we um we have another uh we've got a professional learning day that's coming up and so uh the the directors and i have been talking about uh the professional learning that we're going to provide we have been getting some suggestions from uh just hearing the kinds of needs that are out there in terms of i'll give you an example like um how you know in terms of google meets for example um an instructional aide might work with uh you know with a group of of students and so how that would work would be the teacher would um create the actual google link uh that they would do and then they would have the instructional aid uh support the students with you know whatever they were doing for um you know for that instructional piece um so that would be one thing uh we'll be providing that as well so we're gonna work with the directors the ptosis uh hr team to uh to really support our classified staff as well um with the instructional support and any other support that they need um that they need as well so so the teacher is actually um working with their instruction and showing them how to use google me and yeah yes and then within the district office it's it's administration or yeah even in the school sites because i'm sure the school sites also you know that like i said that there's the clerical staff working yeah and we've um we have we've been checking out um technology our chromebooks to um to classified and to certificate as well if they need a device um we've had lots of our classified staff check out devices as well um and again if you know um if they need support usually the it's the instructional aides will um they are under the direction of that classroom teacher um but if we have uh any support staff uh you know in the offices at the schools or district office um you know we are here to support them as well with with what they need okay thank you very much okay uh board member ariana's do you have another question yes i actually had a similar question to to my colleague about instructional and them understanding um you know how they were going to be performing their job uh some of them as of now do not know um and have not received information so um it i i don't know what's happening so i just wanted to just bring that up and um if that and i know it's you know it's the ninth day and everything's still trying to um get into place and stuff but i think it would be great there's i i know there's some students that do need that one-on-one aid or that do need extra help so it'd be great if we can get those um aides to be able to connect with their teachers and be able to assist these students um moving forward okay any more questions comments okay so giving time for lag um next we'll move on to 10.2 public hearing on the learning content continuity and attendance plan at this time i would like to bring up dr jennifer edick bryant who has a presentation and will uh give you information regarding our learning continuity and attendance plan hi good evening everybody i don't know if you can hear me and i don't know why i don't have an option to turn my camera on so i would love to see you and so maybe we can get that going and then i think kathy will probably have my presentation slides prepared and and visual shortly as well okay sounds good thank you there we go i'm not sure if people can see me but looks like my camera's on yes i can see you yeah that's it technical difficulties yeah that's okay lots of patience mm-hmm there we go okay thank you kathy appreciate that so good evening president bibles fogel board members mr ortega cabinet members this evening i'm pleased to present to you our learning continuity and attendance plan uh for public hearing um state senate bill 98 often referred to as sb 98 was passed along with the state budget for 2021 at the end of june beginning of july and part of that bill required districts to develop write and present a learning continuity and attendance plan to our community this document's purpose is to inform our community about our plans for the 2021 school year to describe the process by which we developed those plans um and and california department of ed came out with a template that we were to use in the first of august and it uh also indicated the california department of ed when i say it the department indicated that this is really a living document which means that it is expected that it will it will adjust and change as our needs and our circumstances change with with the covet 19 distance learning and all of the things that are happening uh during this school year so the plan has 13 sections and prior to you opening the public hearing this evening i would like to provide you with an overview of the plan uh in this presentation the full written plan was also shared with you and the public in the board agenda item and that is also available for review next sli oh right there perfect so the plan begins with a general information section that describes the impact of covid19 on our community how the ausd community came together we managed the closures of our schools and came together to develop the plan for fall learning the second section focuses on stakeholder engagement and as you recall this is a core component of our closures last spring the reopening schools imagination team convened and they developed the work that they did really contributed to the development of our learning continuity plan we gathered uh stakeholder input through meetings through surveys through general outreach which included your public board meetings the district was also able to engage stakeholders in the decision making on on the plan itself we had meetings with pac plus with dlac with the superintendent and parent roundtable sharing a draft of the plan with them and allowing them to to provide some feedback and we we made the plan available to the community as well anybody that wanted to see the plan and make comments on it on the draft of the plan the third section really touches upon our our in in person uh instruction and and it indicates that when safe to do so and in accordance with state and local mandates ausd will return to in-person learning it will talk about the the transition into classrooms with as little disruption as possible the continuing of the same curriculum and and pacing of courses it also this section also really shares about how we will be adding to our cleaning and social distancing guidelines and some of the procedures that we'll take to continue to keep people safe when we do allow and are able to have our students return tracking and monitoring of students in the area of academic achievement social and emotional learning will take place as we do this transition and they are designed again to to be as smooth as possible given uh the transition that will eventually occur and absolutely as we go through we will we'll be prioritizing our students who who have the highest needs in particular looking at our our emergent bilingual students our english learners and that term emergent bilinguals is something that we've been using more around our district office and so you'll hear that this evening but also our students who are in foster care are students from low-income families our students with disabilities our students who are experiencing homelessness will be looking at their experience and their transitions as well as we come back to in person schools next slide the next six sections of the learning continuity plan fall under the heading of distance learning and so the the fourth section continuity of instruction is where we share about the implementation of our our block schedule distance learning 2.0 plan that we're currently um going living in there there's a description of the plan with within this section there's also a link to our reopening schools imagination team plan and document as well as the schedules that are posted on our website so that people who are reading the plan can see what a typical day would look like for an elementary student or a secondary student as well as see all of the work that the reopening school's imagination team did in developing plans for opening this fall this section also notes some of the alternate options for our students and families including our azusa virtual academy long-term independent study and home school options in the device access and connectivity section the plan describes not only our spring distribution but the ongoing chromebook distribution and hot spot distribution that dr mitchell was sharing with you earlier and how that continues to take place this fall chromebooks and hot spots are checked out through systematic record keeping on spreadsheets and also put into our student information system and so not only does this allow us to track and monitor our distribution of chromebooks and hot spots but also to monitor student access to um to the learning because we have a record of who has has those devices in the pupil participation in progress section section 6 we share a little bit about how our distance learning block schedule plan does have both synchronous that live face-to-face interaction with teachers and students and students and their peers as well as the asynchronous instructional time the district also uh currently exceeds the the number of daily minimum minutes that are required by the state and so we are meeting those requirements and exceeding those requirements and also in this section it addresses this idea that we now have grades and attendance and that will also help us support and monitor our students and their engagement in distance learning next slide the seventh section shares our plans to provide professional development for teachers and again you heard some of the things already from dr mitchell in her update we are we are reflecting on the opportunities that took place in the spring and also really planning for for this school year team tosa as you as you know began supporting teachers with technology training online curriculum info implementation and they have really provided that pivotal role this fall as well for example you know their daily live support sessions that have been held every day since students returned for to support our staff our superintendent continues to hold ongoing general information sessions for all staff and as dr mitchell mentioned our our support for success virtual professional learning conference on august 17th was a very successful opportunity for us to to begin the professional learning um for this year we'll we will have ongoing opportunities taking place on our our pupil free days as well as after school topics are going to include things such as emotional social and emotional learning development of formative assessments in a virtual setting technology use implicit bias and and our outside partners will continue to support us um as they did even on august 17th to to provide training and workshops to to meet the needs of our staff the eighth section describes um how we have had to adjust any roles and responsibilities of staff due to covid19 and we are partnering with our bargaining units to really make these changes role shifts have been done within the general scope of employees job descriptions um and hr has been really processing those family first corona virus relief act applications in in addressing the the jobs of our our staff in our district section nine uh touches upon how are we are supporting students with unique needs and and again unique needs includes students who are low-income students in foster care emergent bilingual students and again that term to describe our english learners further we also are addressing um the needs of our students with disabilities and our students experiencing homelessness our distance learning block schedule 2.0 plan offers increased instructional support during the day for example at the elementary level we have a dedicated time before in the mornings in the afternoons for our emerging bilingual students and then to provide our students with disabilities services um secondary students have class periods where they have built into their schedules and then we also have the family and student connection time four days a week where where this can be a time where students can can have their needs addressed uh with their specific teachers and we continue to focus professional learning and have opportunities for staff to learn how to address the students with unique needs for example we offered several uh sessions on august 17th in in working with students with disabilities as well as our emergent bilingual students the next section describes how the district will address pupil learning loss due to covet 19 and we'll be using multiple measures to determine learning loss we have district assessments we have purchased a reading inventory for all students grades k through 12 and this measures students reading levels and it's important because reading is such a critical skill when it comes to all content areas and so this will really enable all teachers to kind of get a feel for where their students are we have our common formative assessments and we have language acquisition assessments that will help us look at the reading writing speaking and listening progress of our students absent of s back and lpac right now we've created these within within our district and so these assessments coupled with site-specific measures are will really help us to identify students who may need more added intervention within and outside of class we have our professional learning communities who continue to use this data to drive their instruction and intervention and the measures and growth for students on all of these assessments will really also help us evaluate the effectiveness in addressing pupil learning loss because these are ongoing measures these aren't just one time a year we'll also look at the mental health and social and emotional well-being of our students and the 11th section touches upon this and we'll be monitoring that through social emotional questionnaires for our students we have teacher observations and we're also scheduled our our listening circles with students in grades 5 through 12 where we can gather qualitative data about their experiences which will include the social and emotional well-being as well as academic areas um in section 12 the topic is school nutrition and azusa continues to to do the drive-through and system to distribute meals right now nutrition services has developed several options that may be used and as we transition to perhaps a hybrid or make a full return to school so we're continuing to provide meals to to our families next slide so within the learning continuity plan our actions and expenditure estimates and and these descriptions and the amounts that have been developed are based upon um some of the things that we talked about during our reopening schools imagination team and that plan as well as some of the ongoing expenditures we expect for the year the planned budgets are a combination of lcap supplemental and concentration funds and our federal learning loss mitigation funds that are one-time funds that we're receiving uh from the federal government to address cova 19.

okay motion by board member arianes seconded by board member kenya who's it you yeah all right okay um do we have any discussion okay um so we'll go ahead and vote and it passes five 5-0 and then we will move on to um item 10.4 and what i'm going to say right now before we go into 10.4 and 10.5 is that there was a request that everybody would like to have a space between times that we get information between information and acting and so what we did this time is we're going to have the information set section right here and then maybe in our next meeting we can just put it on the consent calendar but that'll give everybody two weeks or two weeks time to go ahead and ask any questions and if there was any concerns then they can go ahead and pull it from the kids and calendar and we can continue to discuss does that sound like a reasonable plan yes okay i'm not i'm not sure i understand what you're saying jerry okay um basically some members wanted more time between just instead of just getting the resolution in front of you and voting on it that day they wanted more time in between a space where they could check things out and research and so instead of having two um info and action items weeks apart or you know like two weeks apart um instead of that we'll just do the info on this meeting in the next meeting if it's okay with you that's why i'm throwing it out there we put it in the consent calendar and if there's any discussion we can pull it out of consent well isn't that isn't that the purpose of us getting our our board agenda on thursday for to read it and to look into it and not i thought that was the purpose of us getting it on thursday so we can do our research and read on it and ask questions and then come to the board and be ready to um vote on it the same day but that's my impression yeah no i understand your point um but basically you know they're just some like i didn't know the balance energy solutions we're going to have a presentation i've read up on it but what if i learned something so anyway um that's what was requested and i was just curious if everybody would be fine just having the info and then putting in the consent calendar and that way we don't double dip it well i think at this point i think i mean that's what we're i mean that's what we should do i i kind of agree with yolanda i'm not sure like for example i'm a little surprised to see number 10.5 as an info item because i requested an action item and you and arturo replied that it was going to be an action item so i'm a little surprised that this is an echo item well it was requested that it uh become an info item because there was more research and more information that people wanted i think you should agree upon that prior instead of right like right now i think i think that's been discussed prior so that we should have spoken about it so it is i mean so it is what it is but to your point jerry i mean okay fine i think i'm i'm okay with both of those coming on consent next time because we're getting into today but i would appreciate next time that if i ask something if i ask for an action item to be put on to be put on his action we can always as a board defer action if we don't want to but now we cannot take action because it's not listed as an action item right okay that sounds fine it's only because we're used to a certain process and then it just changes in the middle like right this minute that that's why i questioned it no i understand and i that's why i asked that's it to you all to discuss so again just for the clarity as we're moving forward um i'm not sure that i'm i'm i i'm hearing that obviously this is where we're at right now and this is the way it was done this time around but moving forward as resolutions come up um are we saying that they come info first and then action at a subsequent meeting uh because there are things there are things like for instance uh resolution for uh classified you know employee week uh you know there's there's and so i'm just trying to get clarity on you know moving forward what what are we reverting are we starting something like a new a new system a new process or are we reverting back well i'm not sure i got clarity on that uh as we're building board agendas and as as resolutions keep coming to our uh to our plate you know i think it works i mean both ways if if something's going to be an info item first and then later it's going to be you know if it's going to be separated i think that just the communication amongst the you know on the thursday packet um to let us know um because sometimes you might need to do more research on your part as a cabinet so i'm okay with doing info and then having two weeks to digest and for you to do the research and we have more questions and if you were to give us more information and then for us to go ahead and take action after that um but if if if we can do a hybrid i mean that that would be great too um so that way you know in case and leave that you know at the discretion of the president and the superintendent because you might as a superintendent you know or your cabinet might need some to do more research to be able to uh to give to the board so i i would just like just the communication i guess in the thursday packet um you know by the way this this is going to be an info item today and it's going to be an uh action item within two weeks that's it but i'm okay with that so i'll i'll just speak for myself um in my perspective i i don't see why um i don't necessarily see why something would need to be an info item and then two weeks later be an action item to yolanda's point you know if if we're getting those resolutions on a thursday and we have more than a few days to to review that um or or or answer any questions that to me seems uh sufficient there's certainly i mean almost inevitably will be times where there is more time needed or maybe we want to diffraction and we've done that in the past and i think that that it's already built into the system for us to be able to do that if we need it um so um yeah i i don't to your question arturo i don't i don't see why we would need to go about some new process i think the the traditional process that we have in place is most efficient it makes sense okay fantastic thank you can i can i just summarize that sure so again moving forward um we're gonna we're going to bring resolutions uh for action items and to the points that have been made by the board uh this evening there are mechanisms in places where those could be tabled um i mean there's mechanisms in place that if somebody needs more information that that that can happen and so we're gonna we're gonna bring resolutions now moving forward uh for action items is that correct yes that's what it says yes okay thank you okay now we'll move on to item 10.4 resolution 2021 08 k12 balance energy solutions and apparently there is someone to speak on that resolution [Applause] yes i'd like to introduce and welcome mr robert cruz who is the public affairs manager for socalgas and also a former board member at charter oak unified school district thank you for being here tonight sir hey good evening board and uh super superintendent ortega i appreciate the opportunity uh to speak on it on this issue and thank you for putting on the agenda um so now california basically as you know because of the pandemic is in a world of financial hurt k-12 districts have been impacted uh and we we're bringing this resolution forward because the state has been pushing for electrification there's a big movement up north to go all electric and if your own home is any indication especially when you run your ac all day because of the heat wave and we have blackouts you see the cost of of electricity and so this balanced energy resolution um i've brought it this is the fifth district that i've i've brought it to so i have four other districts that have adopted it uh they did adopt it as a as an action or on consent calendar so i i like the fact that you're gonna you know you're gonna hear me out you're gonna look at the resolution the language if there's questions you know you can pose them to uh to arturo ortega and he can ask me so i can provide additional information but my point is that as a former school board member and even even working with my you know city councils the one thing that we bristled at was when sacramento dropped unfunded mandates on us they would say do this but no dollars were attached to it uh this is similar this movement by the legislature that they have moved in in that direction l.a county tried to pass an ordinance last year l.a county where they they basically said no new restaurants can come in using natural gas so there's a big movement from the restaurant association restaurant owners business owners say we know you can't tell us what to do let us make our own choice if we decide to go win solar hydrogen electric a hybrid of all those a combination give us that choice as a local elected board or city council to make that determination um we think the bounce energy approach provides all those options to you in terms of doing your part to basically decrease the carbon footprint and we've seen the impact with the wildfires in california with the weather when it i just mentioned that when it gets hot our prices go up but if we have options and as a district when you're really struggling in some cases to manage your budgets and sacramento says you're getting less money because you know we're being hit business the revenues aren't coming in from business so i'm presenting this k-12 balance energy resolution for your consideration i hope that you can support it again it's based on cost to the district because if you're told you have to go all electric and you have to change out your equipment and your schools everything has to go electric now your your electric bills go up so that those dollars are being spent when you could basically decide we're going to use uh you know natural gas to do this we're going to use maybe solar energy to do this but you the choices are made at your local level um and then again cost of choice really are the two big big issues the other thing i wanted to mention uh before i open up the questions if you have any is that the city of azusa passed a balanced energy resolution as as a city the city council did last year uh and now this year i'm coming to to the local uh school districts that are they're under they're in my district to ask for your support on this so with that if there's any questions i'd be glad to answer them any questions oh board member ariana's you you mentioned something that um you said in legislation they're passing that all districts have to go through do electric is this something new that has been brought up to legislation well there was a bill a year and a half a year and a half ago a b 32 it did not pass because they made amendments to the bill but we hear that that that legislation is being reworked and will be coming back the feeling is it will impact not only school districts but business the business community if sacramento can mandate that you have to go all electric that's the threats kind of nothing has come out aboard marianas nothing concrete yet but we hear from our staff in sacramento that this this there's a lot of conversation around this we just want to be prepared for our our cities and our school districts to say let us make that choice at the local level thank you okay any other questions okay so now we'll move on to item um much appreciated and item 2.5 resolution 2021-9 schools and local communities fundings act and chilean i've been pounding for this for a long time so i totally agree with you on that so if anybody else would like to speak up on the the basis for the proposition 13 and all that other things right do you want me to speak to this because yes please because yes i made a request to put this on the agenda to consider supporting prop 15 um which which is the it's it would um it's the schools and communities first act and it would um raise additional local property tax revenues by creating what this what's called a split roll and so commercial properties would be taxed at their at their fair at their fair share i think over since prop 13 was passed in the late 70s and the share of property taxes that's generated by the state that comes from residential so so when when prop 13 was passed when you look at the share of property tax revenues um two-thirds came from commercial one-third came from residential now um 40 years later it's flipped so two-thirds of all property taxes generated come from residential houses and one-third come from commercial and a lot of that has to do with the fact that um when when when a corporation or owns property right it doesn't change hands like it does with houses and so those properties do not get reassessed so this this will just allow the state to assess commercial property um at current rates and make it a fair system there is a big carve out for for small businesses so they define small businesses as three million or under so a lot of our small business businesses not all obviously but a lot of small businesses will be protected um and so i'm just putting this forth because it will generate a significant amount of revenue for school district for schools and i think we are always talking about how we need more money for our schools and how we don't have enough um and so this is one step towards we trying to reach full and fair funding so i just wanted so obviously it's information we can't vote around tonight but i hope that when it comes back to us next meeting that that everyone that will be willing to support this resolution if i can just add a little bit to that i want to i do want to show appreciation to uh afe aea and csea that signed on to this resolution as well so they have been named uh in the resolution in support of of the schools and local communities funding act and i'd like to throw in the um when i first ran for school board i was contacted by the people who are backing started this whole thing and i thought it was such a great idea and i did not know that was what was going on as far as that and the flipping the upside down and now multi-million dollar uh companies like disney are not paying the same fair share of property tax as we are as homeowners and our children are being denied that income for their schools so that's why i'm on board um anybody else i just want to thank shilonin for bringing this forward because it is a good proposition and it will help our students thank you okay anybody else alrighty um so we'll go ahead and we'll move down to the consent calendar we've got way too much cuteness going on right there 11.1 all matters listed under the consent calendar are considered by the board to be routine and format following the last consent calendar agenda item there will be no discussion of these items prior to the time of to the time the board staff or public requests specific items to be discussed if discussion is requested by a board member that item will be removed from the consent calendar and will be considered separate the superintendent and staff recommend approval of all consent calendar agenda items do i have a motion on the floor make a motion to approve 11.2 through 11.8 accent calendar thank you do i have a second i would second and open for discussion to to pull out two items okay 11.4 and 11.7 four and eleven point seven okay so we would be voting on all but eleven point four or eleven point seven eleven point one eleven point two eleven point three eleven point five and eleven point six and eleven point eight um so we had the motion it's been seconded let's vote okay and it passes 5-0 now we'll move on to item 12.0 items pulled from the consent calendar and item 11.4 will become 12.1 and item 11.7 will become 12.2 um gabriella our board member arianis uh yes for 11.4 i had a question and mr howard taurus the medical billing um i just want how often do we use him um you know what aaron cramer can answer that one um this is he this this position is providing um medical authorization for our speech therapists to bill medi-cal for district reimbursement um so we do receive that medi-cal billing so in terms of the frequency um i'm not quite sure but aaron cramer um is that a question that you are there can you answer that one i'm not sure if i'm here am i here you're here okay good um so we do participate in medi-cal billing which means that our providers such as our psychologists our mental health therapists and our speech and language therapists bill medical for services that they provide to students that are medically based there is a requirement for speech and language therapists in order for them to bill they need a doctor or a medical professional to sign off on their billing meaning that their services are medically related dr taras works for many districts and selfas in southern california um signing off on the medically related billing for all of our speech therapists and so that's why it's actually a 15-minute charge for his hourly rate um he signs off yearly for a two-year contract it might be twice a year excuse me i think he he reviews twice a year okay and so we're just we're just renewing his contract for for him for this next for the 2020 2021 school year exactly that is correct okay that's it thank you can we also actually can we can also another point of clarification because it looks like there's a discrepancy between the actual agreement and the language unless i'm mistaken um so it's 25 cents an hour not to exceed 70 a year on the contract but it appears that on the uh i believe that 2.5 is um fifth like a quarter of an hour at 280.

and then it is three and a half percent tax on um earnings over five hundred thousand dollars for a couple filing jointly so if somebody earns five hundred and one thousand it'd be thirty five dollars just on that one thousand dollars or five thousand the money has four purposes um one is for salaries of teachers and other classroom um personnel one is for salaries or to hire people for student support positions that would be like nurses and counselors those that work with students to help them get through school success successfully one is to retain and train teachers to keep them in schools and hire teachers and the fourth purpose that we would have is for career and technical education expenses there is a fifth one that the state would do which is to fund the arizona teacher academy to make sure that we have um to help with the teacher shortage so that prop that's what the proposition would do and what the proposition would be used for i recommend that people do their own research and find out exactly what it is and make their own decision on whether they should vote for it or not but those are the facts associated with prop 208 our lobbyists sent out an email to us and told us that it would be our impact would be about 100 i'm sorry 1.6 to 1.7 million dollars in additional revenue for the four purposes that i just discussed and i believe that's it as far as my report goes unless there's any questions any questions any questions any no i'm good okay and moving on we'll go to item 6b1 financial reports rebecca okay so august we were still working in two months so i have um both fiscal years to present so for fiscal year 1920 um it looks like we're ending our mno budget at 5.48 percent so the carry over is actually a little more than the 400 000.

so what's back in july the board approved the three scenarios for instruction one was all in person the other was at home learning and the one that we're about to enter is the hybrid instruction where kids go to school two days a week well since then a couple things have changed that i wanted to the board to know and to approve um in the new model one is um that originally the masks face masks were going to be recommended since that time that this was approved the governing board i'm sorry the governor came out with the masked mandate as part of an executive order and so instead of saying recommended it now says face coverings are required per executive order the next one is that the scenario said no after school person in person activities were to be allowed act after school activities would be held virtually whenever possible however district staff believes that limited in-person after-school activities can take place in a safe manner when virtual gatherings are not feasible um a couple a couple examples one that happened a couple weeks ago and i think we just we talked about it they were trying to bail hay at the at the farm we needed some helpers with it from ffa to kind of come and help bail the hay another is coming up next weekend we have people that are going to shop corn for the corn dinner we need people to do that and if it's done with masks with social distancing with um hand hygiene things like that we think it can be done in a safe manner and so we're asking that instead of no after school in person activities it's say it's became too limited so it's not something that we'll do all the time but when we feel we can do it safely and it's more than just a normal meeting it's more of a necessity that we could have these limited meetings and the last one said that there would not be any cvhf ahs athletics or actually no athletics period sixth through grade six through eight athletics have been cancelled but what we'd like to do is leave cvhf cvhs athletics to follow the aia guidelines and so the aia will determine if there's athletics or not and we have been following that so far as far as the pre-season training and so we'd like to change that to be for the season the ai would determine if we're to have sports or not those are the three changes everything else on there remain the same and so wanted to bring it to you for approval okay um there's always a chance that the governor can switch that to where fast mandatory right the executive order said that the um mask would be required until the arizona department of health services said that it was okay to no longer wear masks so that would it would be up to the department of health services to do that but there is that mechanism yes okay and then my other question is has the aia made a decision about sports yet the the um i know that the executive board met with the sports medicine advisory council yesterday and they are set to meet tomorrow to determine what's going to happen for the season and so we will know more tomorrow some of our athletics have already started they started actually some earlier this week um and so and football is expected to start on well they say monday but i imagine it's going to be tuesday i think it was september 7th originally they have yeah which is a holiday so um you know that's that's the the plan right now we're going forward as if sports athletics are going to continue but again it's going to be up to the aia and we should know more by the end of day tomorrow okay okay any other questions right we need a motion please to approve the hybrid instruction model i'll make a motion to approve the hybrid and structured model scenario two revisions thank you all in favor aye aye aye all right agenda item 10c beginning of preschool instruction this was my fault i when we talked about starting hybrid instruction at the last board meeting or the last special board meeting we left off kind of what the plan was for preschool so in a normal time preschool goes to school four days a week and in the for half day so the three-year-olds will go in the morning and the four-year-olds will go in the afternoon we would like to keep that since they are only going half day we would like to keep them four days a week half day the their territorial has added a classroom to give more space we also have feel like we have the people to do that um and so what the plan would be again would be offer regular instruction four days a week and it says september 1st but that's actually september 8th which would be on tuesday for preschool at territorial early childhood centers we believe we can do it safely um i do want to mention that our master's requirements do not apply to preschool kids so the three and four-year-olds would not be required to wear masks however the adults in the room would but it does make a kindergartners it's from it's from kinder through 12th grade that is correct okay that's gonna they're gonna be chewing on it they're gonna be pulling at it and that's i don't disagree with that at all but that's what the executive order called for right all right well this also is an action item so we will need a motion to approve the preschool instruction i'll make a motion to approve the regular instruction of preschool to begin four days a week on september 8th 2020 for preschool territorial curling choppers all in favor aye agenda item 11a uh suspension of policy bgb for the period of time the board addresses 11b and that was a correction dr bowen that was made prior to your writing it's actually 11b not 10b okay so there are the next item has to do with sexual harassment a sexual harassment regulation along with title ix sexual harassment and regulation that needs to be implemented basically asap and in order to do that typically if you recall for most policies it requires two readings so there's the first reading that no action is taken and then a month later you come back and take a reading or and then also that the second reading you vote on it and changes can be made in between if there's requested changes things like that what you are doing is suspending the rule that says that you need two readings and it would can be done in one reading and so that's all this is doing is saying for the next item we only have to do one reading and we can we can approve it in in one at one meeting and be done with it and then it becomes policy all right any questions on that does that make sense okay so this also is an action item and we will need a motion to we do need a motion even so though it says information yeah i think it needs emotion we do need a motion to suspend policy bgb just for this week so i'll make a motion for the suspension of policy bgb for the period of time the board addresses item 11b all in favor so now on to 11b correct which is the policy regarding sexual harassment correct there is so we've always had a sexual harassment policy we actually discussed this when we discussed the general harassment policy so however there if you can see there are some changes they took some stuff out of the regulation and then they get in there they took a significant amount out in the policy as well but that's because they added the title ix um sexual harassment policy which is a brand new policy and a brand new regulation all right does anyone have any questions comments want to discuss this whatsoever and these are required as fed part of federal regulations not necessarily state law like we normally have to deal with anything here okay so again this is an action item we will need a motion to approve this policy we'll make the motion for approval of a policy aca deaf sexual harassment regulation a-c-a-r policy a-c-a-a title nine sexual harassment and regulation a-c-a-a-r thank you all in favor aye aye agenda item 11c is our second reading of policy iha and policy kb and policy kb so if you recall policy iha is the one that requires i believe it's on september 25th each year to be observed as sandra day o'connor civic celebration day and all it's not a legal holiday but each public school shall dedicate the majority of school of the school day to civics education and then if it's on a weekend you do it either the day before or after then policy kb parent involvement involves adding a parents i believe it's a parent's rights work um parents rights booklet to the district website and that's something easily attainable oh it's on the department of education um website and we would get it from there and we would put it on our website in a on a page that has all the other required postings that we're supposed to have any other questions on either of these policies any comments great can i have a motion please for the approval of the second reading of policy a iha and policy kb i'll make a approval of the second reading the policy ipha basic instructional program and policy kb parental involvement and education thank you all in favor hi hi else from anybody all right meeting adjourned thank you andy for calling in

so in determining plan budgets uh we we are and the distribution of the funds and to address our learning continuity plan and and to prioritize our high needs students the districts sought to use a similar funding proportions to those in our lcap funding distributions in the lcap provided a base from which the district worked to develop the proposed expenditures for all funds directed towards implementing this learning continuity plan by using the lcap as a model the district maintained that important focus on our low-income students our emergent bilingual students and our students in foster care as well as addressing needs of students with disabilities experience and students experiencing homelessness the budget expenditures are our estimates based on current plans and it can be adjusted to meet the needs and the circumstances that face our students as our data may indicate the data will drive these decisions as as we're implementing this learning continuity plan and we can identify even now several programs and services and things that are new to azusa uh and using some of these funding for example purchasing of online instructional resources such as apex courses for the virtual academy and and as i mentioned the reading inventory for all students and some intervention materials and added materials that will help with online and distance learning for students with disabilities and obviously we've been on purchasing and making sure that we have enough devices and hot spots to to ensure all students have access to to our distance learning so those are some of the expenditures and and uh i'm sure you'll hear more as we have our covet 19 updates at each meeting so as we see the needs uh then we will create the systems and programs that are going to address those needs for our our students and families using that lcap model has helped us to develop these these expenditure budgets so before we transition to any questions or comments i i would like to note also that we continued to receive feedback and input on this document late friday we received feedback from the la county office of education we asked them to pre-review our plan the draft of our plan and so we'll be incorporating some of their uh recommendations that they made and furthermore last thursday night at our community at our community engagement initiative professional leading and learning network californians together facilitated by ms cruz gonzalez presented some of their suggestions and ideas on how we can incorporate and address the needs of our emergent bilingual students and so they had some some very useful tools that we're going to use to to see where we can add to and augment the the plan draft as it is now and and while there will be um these adjustments made the core content of our learning continuity plan will remain as shared here with you and and again i remind you that the california department of education really expects that these plans will shift and adapt as different circumstances arise and the unknowns that will inevitably hit us through the 2021 school year so at this point i will open things up to any questions or comments from the board prior to your public hearing uh i see you yolanda do you have a question uh so my my question is regarding the um so this is only for the uh 2021 school year and then it goes back to the regular alcap or um yeah first question yeah i'm sorry and then so if um if they are no longer in distant learning it will still continue even if it's in new year yeah the plan is for the 2021 school year but its particular focus was to um really focus on and highlight some of the things that we're doing because of covid19 um but even after we go back we're still going to have impacts and and effects from the school closures and so it will be a plan for our entire year and to answer your question about the lcap yes the the l cap for this year originally was set to be um presented to you in december and this plan um is replacing it while it's not an el cap uh it it is replacing it for this year and so throughout this year we will be working with our pack plus with our stakeholders and bringing to you information as we develop our next three-year lcap which will um will be developed and you'll approve in june thank you uh board member greer well i have a quick process question i think normally what we do with public hearings is after the staff presentation then we normally open the public hearing allow public comment close the public hearing and then have staff and then have the board discussion that's no that's the normal process so i'm okay doing it this way i'm just i'm just wanting to point out that's not normally how we do it okay that would anybody open the public hearing if they want motion do i have a motion to open the hearing you only need a motion to close you you actually oh okay and then we need a motion to close the public hearing okay i'm opening the meeting the public hearing on the continuity uh the public hearing on the learning continuity and attendance plan and i see adrian has a comment or board member grier i i do but i can wait until the public comment uh public hearing is closed all right um does anybody in the public would anybody like to make a comment at this point you can raise your hand nope are you seeing that i make a motion to close the public hearing thank you sheed uh second okay uh motion by board member sheila nin seconded by board member and discussion of any kind nope all right let's go ahead and vote oh no no i we don't need to vote oh i know you mean on the public hearing yeah yeah we're just closing the public hearing okay and then um board member greer thank you uh yeah jennifer can you can you speak to [Music] i see the list here i'm pulling it up i see the list and it talks about the priorities um prioritizing low-cut low-income students emerging bilingual students and foster youth um this is also the same you said for uh you know if and when we're returning in person is that also a part of this but okay um i'm so i'm curious to know can you clarify the percentage of our district that that then qualifies uh for you know within those categories because i would i would imagine that that's a pretty um significant amount and so how do you how do you prioritize you know whatever that number 80 percent or whatever that number is for yes 85 about 85 percent of our our students fall into the low income uh subgroup about 25 26 are emergent bilingual or english learners and that's overlapping i'm sorry and that would be overlapping right okay yeah these are what we call unduplicated pupils so they're only counted once when it comes to the total but i'm just giving you yeah we may have some emergent bilingual students who also uh are you know low-income families and so they're only counted once for accounting purposes but our percentages are this so yes it is overlapping and then our our foster youth i believe is is less than one percent two percent maybe and that you know that fluctuates and more than any of the others that's the number that tends to change even throughout the school year so yeah okay so the only thing i maybe would add then is um i i think from some of the feedback that i'm i'm getting and things that we're seeing you know that i would love to see part of that prioritization list is also younger you know younger students um because some of the you know some of the tk some of the kindergarten some of those younger students are having a much more difficult time engaging online than you know an 8th grader or or a 12th grader so um it would be great for that to also be you know part of that equation and that was some of the feedback that we did here that will be added it's just highlighting a little more our earliest learners yeah love it okay and i see that we did not uh finish the vote so yolanda i see has not voted is there a technical difficulty there's no there's nothing on my screen that has it okay i'll i'll say yes all right okay everybody else all right all right board membership yes all right cool all right it passes 5-0 okay any other questions or comments yeah i do but i think gabriella was about to ask questions when i when i talked about the public hearing so no okay okay oh no you're good all right so you have i do have a couple questions um eric jennifer so on the um on the presentation i noticed you didn't include the people and family engagement and outreach section um on your in the number of sections you reported and the powerpoint but it's did i skip that it's not in the powerpoint but it isn't i mean you have stuff written in the report oh my goodness can you just talk a little bit about that are you talking about this this the section in the powerpoint well i don't i mean you i think you reference the different sections of the template and you went from you went from pupil learning loss to our mental health to school nutrition and in between that i see people and family engagement and outreach yes thank you thank you yes and that that was my error i apologize so let me i will share a little bit with you about that section um this section will talk about um how we will be doing a tiered re-engagement a tiered re-engagement system where using our attendance records we have a process by which we'll be reaching out to students who are not engaging in the distance learning and put them through different tiers and pretty rapid succession uh the sb 98 states that students that miss three days or sixty percent of instruction that triggers this tiered re-engagement system and that's set up at our schools with the school site re-engagement team that begins the process and then as the student is worked through and and if gay engagement doesn't uh take place through the first few stages or tiers that moves then to a district level and so that is that is one of the ways that we are able to um to address that engagement and and make sure that we are are outreaching uh to our parents about uh about the requirements of being part of school and it's distance distance learning so and while the the prompt here does not really um address the the stakeholder engagement it really focuses in on the tiered re-engagement also just to know um as this is planning to as as we did in the spring continue to do a lot of parent outreach at our site levels as well as at a district level where we are beginning to plan for an azusa parent learning network where we'll have opportunities to to work with our parents and offer them opportunities to learn and how to support their students thank you appreciate that thank you i just want to give feedback on that because i do think that's a really important piece and i hope that um i hope that i would see it in the final lcp that i would see it reflected that we're doing that i mean i appreciate that the state is really giving us direction to focus on the re-engagement plan in this session right but i think that it's important for us to articulate um how the piece you know how we're planning how we really treat our parents as partners in terms of learning and feeling really about you know and and identify how we're going to be supporting those the parents yeah so you know to hear that we're going to have a learning network for parents i think that's something to articulate so along those lines this is just my overarching feedback um i think that i feel the document is i i really like the way it lays out sort of the at the high level but my concern is around um the way the budgeting is it's just we see these very large numbers with lots of different things and i heard you tonight reference specific things that we're investing in already and as a board member i think it's very important i'm going to be approving this is essentially a budget document for us because it's outlining how we're spending a significant portion of our supplemental concentration dollars in the federal funding it's really important as a board member to understand i mean if we've already made decisions about some of these investments i i would like to see that reflected um if you if it's not appropriate to be in that in this plan then it needs to be someplace i think arthur you guys have a you know i really appreciated with our lcap that we got a line by line spreadsheet that showed this section we're going to be spending this money because i really can't tell and i even since i see descriptions that are similar in different areas it makes me i don't understand whether there's replication in terms of the dollars that are shown in these budgets or whether those are all different expenditures so i think i mean and and i also just want to say i understand that obviously we're going to have to be flexible right and so whatever we whatever we approve this month does not mean it's going to be set in stone but i think that if we do have clear expenditures that we've already committed to or already have taken or are planning to then let's articulate that so that we as a board understand right so so i'm you know i'll leave it to you to figure out how the best way to to to show that so that it's part of what we approve on september 30th um because even i'm like you know i hear you talking about apex classes or this kind of uh or a reading assessment um piece that we're going to be adopting right like i think that's important for our community to be articulate or to be public somehow so transparency people know um the one piece that i don't see in here that i that i'm just gonna that i'm just gonna put out there in terms of a board member is that i really there's been a lot of research a lot of um a lot a lot of information coming out around the importance on of one-on-one tutoring especially when addressing learning laws and there's examples of districts across the state who are investing dollars in in making in in giving opportunities for families to take advantage of one-on-one tutoring right and obviously that's an investment right because we would be hiring tutors to work with students and i know we've gotten feedback from different parents around their individual students struggling whether or not they fit in one of the groups that we're focusing on um and so i would like us to i would like to understand in terms of those you know what kind of opportunities are we planning to give families in terms of one-on-one tutoring and are we going to carve out a budget for that that that's going to be available for families to use are we going to have a system in terms of identifying which students we think we need one-on-one tutoring um i mean i appreciate that we're putting a lot of effort into our initial instruction right and first first best instruction is always the best right but but i think we know that under these circumstances um that other that other individual attention is going to be so important so that's just the one piece that i didn't see in here that i'm just putting forward to think about let's let's find a way to make sure that this is in the plan okay so those are those are my pieces of feedback otherwise i think it's it's a great start um and i know this is a public hearing um but hopefully we'll see some um some additions by the time we adopt it at the next board meeting yes thank you remember ariana's hi yes i had a question on fap and um i i would like to to know how many students are reclassified each year you know so we'll start with last year and the year before on just to get some data to be able to because we are starting this new um this new learning continuity and attendance plan that is a little bit different just so i just want to be able to track that data moving forward and if that could be and it doesn't have to be on this friday packet it could be the next friday packet is fine i know you just have to do some digging um for a couple years so thank you okay is there any more discussion all right we will move to item 10.3 certification of signatures resolution number 20 and motion 2 move certification of signatures resolution number 20.

i think you're right it's reversed you know what um mr girl i'm so sorry i did not catch that when we reviewed it you are 100 right it is 2 280 for a quarter hour but then it says not to exceed 70 per year which that's still accurate that is correct that is accurate okay okay and then we move to go ahead and vote don't we no let me go through them both right can aaron just clarify because what i mean she's what does it make sense how do you how does he charge that per hour but he only spent only 20 dollars for the entire school year so because there's a clerical error i do think we're going to need to come back with this and i do apologize for the clerical error but to clarify the content of the question his hourly rate to my understanding is 280 dollars per hour and he works and now i'm doing my math he works a quarter of an hour so 15 minutes so he he only charges us 70 per year even though his hourly rate is higher because i'm looking at the actual contract it 1.25 at 280 hours equals 70 dollars per year that's that's the clearance so he only works 15 minutes for us for the whole year correct 15 minutes for the whole year it is a paperwork he does so we probably spent more time talking about it than he does you know what we are fiscally responsible that is an important thing to okay so the way that i just figured it out the 280 dollars that he charges for per hour quarterly would be one-fourth of that so then it would equal 70 dollars and that's how you guys but the way that it's reflected on the it doesn't necessarily there was there was a clerical error so i will have to bring this back and i do apologize for that okay well we've already had a motion in a second so we're going to have to have it amended to being pulled off of the agenda so yeah and i will bring it back next time you're cabling it substitute motion move that we table this second point four okay so we're going to table 12.1 11 also known as 11.4 and we vote on tabling that okay everyone now we're moving on to item 12.2 formerly 11.7 approved contract with integrity pest control management inc rfp 2021 100 100 and ms ariana's yes my question for this is excuse me what is the cost monthly because it doesn't clarify that on on the contract and so i think it's really important that it clarifies that because it just has an amount and it it doesn't have is it monthly is it yearly is it quarterly is the calendar and so um first of all what is the cost and can we please put in there that you know what's the cycle monthly yearly currently is um 2030 per month and that covers the district-wide offices as well as child nutrition our nutrition services sorry i'm sorry can you repeat that sure two thousand thirty dollars so 2030 is the monthly amount monthly i i think it's really important um we don't have the the like i said that reflected on on the contract so i think it's important that it's reflected on the contract so that way um there's point of clarity okay okay would you like to just go ahead and pull it and have it rewritten and bring it back uh yes madam president i would like to go ahead and pull the table and bring it back can we have um i would like to go ahead and motion to pull and bring back to our next meeting to for the monthly cost to be reflected on the contract second okay uh motion by board memorial seconded by board member yolanda all in favor or not okay and it passes 5-0 and at this point we'll go down to 13.0 human resources 13.1 consider approval of consultant gun psychological services incorporated um i would assume that that is from mr ronquillo do we have it uh there's yeah do i have a motion on the floor for this a motion to approve okay do we have a second second okay motion by board member ariana seconded by board member sheila neen um any discussion yeah uh just one one quick question can can you elaborate on briefly what this is and then also the contract says that the way that this will be reported uh back to the board or the is through ieps but that's not that doesn't that doesn't really get clarity on the like the effectiveness of the consultant um so can you speak to that as well how do we know that the consultant is that the district is getting its money's worth like to bring back uh aaron cramer to talk about this one okay so um this consultant agreement is in response to a parent request for an individual education evaluation the selfa the special education local plant agency so east san gabriel valley selfa has a list of approved consultants that are considered qualified to conduct independent education evaluations so in this particular case a parent utilize their procedural rights and safeguards to ask for a psychological um because they had questions with our internal evaluation and so this is for one student and this is an approved um psychologist or company to conduct that assessment so you're saying the family picked this this this assessment the person correct yes yes that is correct so we give them a list of um of assessors that are approved now they families can still bring someone else that's not on that list um for us to consider however this one does happen this particular company does happen to be on that list and we've used them before okay thank you okay any more questions all right we'll go ahead and vote then okay it passes 5-0 and now we'll move on to item 13.2 approve the memorandum of understanding between the azusa unified school district and the azusa educators association cta and nea motion on the floor motion to move 13.2 okay motion by board member ariana's do i have a second second seconded by board member grier um any discussion yeah i have something so i one i want to say i appreciate that we've been able to collaborately collaboratively develop this mou i think you see some examples around the state where that's not happening and some places are start happens are about to start school and don't have something so i appreciate that this was done i mean we saw i think the teachers voted on it at least a week and a half for two weeks before school started so i appreciate that um i just want to ask a question in terms of at the very end of the mou it talks about synchronous instruction and it lays out minimal minimal daily minute or minute minimum minutes per block can you clarify how that fits into our instructional approach and and whether we expect to see that's what that's what we're going to see in classrooms or or how that how that is going to translate into into how much synchronous instruction students are going to get dr mitchell do you want to respond to this question oh yeah i think it's either this is directed to our dana sorry i'll start um so these would be they are um minimum it would be the floor of synchronous instruction and so sp 98 delineates that students will receive synchronous instruction live interactions with their teachers and or peers and so this can be done in a variety of ways and so these are again these are minimum floor expectations and really it really depends in terms of what kinds of you know instructional activities we're doing best case is obviously uh we have whole group instruction but especially with distance learning it really should be additional instruction uh synchronous instruction with uh small groups right so that is one of the um the best evidence-based practices in distance learning so we would expect to see a combination of whole and small group as well okay thank you any more discussion okay let's vote ass is 5-0 and now we'll move on to item 14.0 business and finance 14.1 approve agreement with aries software do i have a motion on the floor so i'm so moved hmm okay so it was uh moved by board member shiloh nin and seconded by board member greer okay do we have any discussion all right let's go ahead and vote on this okay it's past five zero and next is fourteen point two ratify and approve slash approve child care alliance of los angeles grant i have a motion on the floor make a motion to approve 14.2 motion by board member yolanda a second seconded by board member arianas any discussion yes i have an explanation on that please sure i'd be happy to so um the child care alliance has awarded our district with a fourteen thousand dollar grant that will provide our preschool teachers with professional learning instructional coaching and um other resources needed to improve our preschool programs and improve our rating so preschool programs receive a rating on what's called the quality rating and improvement system and so this is an opportunity for us to continue continue to improve our practice um and again professional learning um uh we can purchase additional resources um uh along with that as well and so um we're excited and it's uh fourteen thousand dollars all right thank you uh board member arianas do you have a question yes i just wanna um just congratulate our district in receiving this crap for fourteen thousand dollars is fourteen thousand dollars and i'm i'm really excited you know that that we're getting this grant it's an opportunity um our district applied and we received it so yay congratulations guys okay um and any other comments okay let's go ahead and vote passes 5-0 and does anybody have anything else before i close the meeting comments well i would like to thank you everybody and miss jamal appreciate you all right everybody drive carefully have a good night what time are we closing this meeting oh i'm sorry closing the meeting at 9 20.

um capital we're ending in 10.21 percent and adjacent ways is 95.8 percent um for the current fiscal year right now we're at 3.59 percent in m o uh 7.39 in capital and sixty point eight two percent in adjacent ways do we still have bills outstanding for adjacent ways yes so that sixty percent will probably go down significantly no the sixty percent is what we have after we've encumbered what we owe to the town okay yeah okay so yep so are you saying that this is the carryover the eight hundred eight thousand yep okay so with that adm we should be should correct and it really depends on what the stabilization grant comes out to be but the the stabilization grant should be i won't say cover all but most of that um adm loss and i think we already accounted for part of that carryover i think maybe 400 000 so that we've already accounted for in our budget in the current year okay so okay yeah because we didn't realize the carrier was going to be so high no especially in today's world all right item seven a through f is our consent agenda if someone would like to make a motion since this is an action item to approve the consent agenda i'll make a motion to through the consent agenda oh in favor fantastic item eight another action item this is the approval of our personnel report there is a supplement um so please make sure you get both the supplements actually longer than the original one we added a bunch of coaches that is what has to do with it we have looks like seven new classified i'm sorry six new classified we have a couple resignations we have three classified changes a new classified sub and uh looks like two four six seven eight coaches great any other questions i have a question on the supplement number six uh-huh she right she left her position was never filled and now she's coming back to fill her position at the same rate of pay and everything okay so without any other questions i'm sorry annie okay all right there's still a motion on the floor so all in favor aye aye perfect item 9a um selection of our asba delegate all right there's actually this job does we'll do two things um and i think annie has been to uh doing some of this at the law conference that is supposed to take place next week which is not taking place in person it's actually taking place virtually at the end of the week they had a delegate that approved the legislative agenda for asba there is also another job that this delegate would do and then there's going to be a third job that we'll talk i think it's in the next agenda item that would help choose the board members for the asba at the december meeting it has not been decided whether the december meeting is going to take place or not the september meeting will take place virtually so it's not something that you would need to go to so um annie i don't know if you want to describe i know the experience was a little bit interesting when you did your your delegate this is a different experience because you're not in person but you want to kind of maybe share what that was uh yeah i did this i know it was really interesting it was there was a lot of back and forth um going you know hearing everybody's different opinions on everything and then voting you know uh even the wording you know there's lots of people that had different opinions on the way that things should be ordered so definitely different if we don't have anyone that is doing it virtually i guess i would do it all in favor thanks guys i really appreciate it well i don't think it would be fair since i'm not going to be here next year to take that job on well and i guess we should ask is anyone do you have to register for the conference is there anyone you know foreign and yes i have to do that first thing tomorrow not for the whole conference just for that one event yeah okay all right so unfortunately it is an action item and we have to vote you in annie oh great okay so if someone wanted to make the motion to have annie be our delegate that'd be fantastic i'll make the motion to select annie mortensen as our delegate for the asba all in favor aye aye are you an i annie all right thank you item 9b is proposed 2021 political agenda and delegate assembly process so this is actually the information that she would vote on it's not a whole lot of different than what it has been in the past maximize state funding for competitive salaries to attract recruit retained teachers there's a revision requested for the school finance formula fully fund full day k advocate to preserve and protect the voters intent of prop 301 index district additional assistance for inflation provide funding for new space so that has to do with asba eliminate unfunded mandates and administrative burdens return these seg funds to the primary tax levy and actually that's about as far as i probably want to say because there's a lot more but it was in the agenda and this is something that again hasn't changed a whole lot since uh you went through this process last year okay uh is this an action item do we need to make the decision this evening you do okay okay because actually i believe that the event is next weekend or like in a week and a half all right well does anyone feel really strongly on any of these that you would like to put forward as like the very first or is this the one that we i think you just improved the whole thing together fantastic even better you want me to make that yes approve the arizona school boards association's draft 2021 political agenda great all in favor aye aye aye i'm sorry i thought it was the one that we chose like for and so you just do the whole thing okay all right item 9c is yavapai county delegate now so the last one was for the asba statewide stuff this is for a the county wide selection of a county director so what happens is the whoever is selected to be the delegate this is actually there's going to be a county meeting and the county meeting is on october 28th it has already been said that it's going to be a virtual meeting so at that meeting there will be an election to determine who in yavapai county and it has to be another school board member will serve as the as the um county director and they actually serve on the asba board and so the only thing this person does is represent chino val the chino valley governing board in the selection of that person they are not on the asba board so that's what this delegate does oh well i'm pretty sure i guess i'll volunteer for this one well would anyone like to nominate someone to uh be our delegate and then we can have a motion and vote for them well i think penny is a good choice because she's going to be here however annie kind of sounds like she wants to do it so we could give her the opportunity that's what i was thinking okay would you like to make that motion thank you i'll make a motion to approve annie morgansen as our voting delegate for the comey board meetings asp accountable all in favor aye aye and you're it thank you annie that was with enthusiasm yes thank you item t-10a cvhs english learner recommendation cindy okay so the district is asking for approval from the governing board to allow us to have our high school english language learner students attend all four days a week during hybrid rather than just their two assigned days during hybrid and ms karate who is the district el coordinator and principal heidi wolf and i have met a few times about this and our rationale for making the request is our high school el students are really struggling with the at home portion of instruction due to language barriers and it's particularly important for the high school kids because the high school kids are seeking credits for their classes and trying to graduate and so what we what we figured out was about half the kids attend hybrid on monday wednesday about half attend on tuesday thursday from our language learner group at the high school which would mean that miss karate would have the other half of those kids on the opposite days so it would always be a pretty small group of kids at the most you might have seven or eight kids each of those days but it would allow her not only to provide the instruction for the students in english language acquisition but it would allow her to help the students with their other coursework because they're struggling with things like their math or their history or whatever and one of the things that really put this on our radar was the number of teachers reaching out to her because the students were having so much difficulty the other thing i just wanted to note was that many of our students who come from spanish-speaking homes haven't been speaking english since they haven't been in school and so it's created they've lost some of their language skills so it's created an additional barrier for them so we're asking that those students be allowed to attend four days a week during hybrid two during their normal hybrid schedule two for assistance with language skill remediation and that they also be allowed to ride district transportation all four days any questions all right this is an action item would anyone like to make a motion please to approve item 10. i moved to for the approval of chino valley high school el students to attend four days per week during hybrid instruction and approval for chino valley high school el students to write district transportation to and from schools each day during hybrid instruction all right all in favor hi aye you item 10b revised hybrid instructions so the actual information that's related to this is behind the next item which is the hybrid instructional model scenario 2.

okay motion by board member arianes seconded by board member kenya who's it you yeah all right okay um do we have any discussion okay um so we'll go ahead and vote and it passes five 5-0 and then we will move on to um item 10.4 and what i'm going to say right now before we go into 10.4 and 10.5 is that there was a request that everybody would like to have a space between times that we get information between information and acting and so what we did this time is we're going to have the information set section right here and then maybe in our next meeting we can just put it on the consent calendar but that'll give everybody two weeks or two weeks time to go ahead and ask any questions and if there was any concerns then they can go ahead and pull it from the kids and calendar and we can continue to discuss does that sound like a reasonable plan yes okay i'm not i'm not sure i understand what you're saying jerry okay um basically some members wanted more time between just instead of just getting the resolution in front of you and voting on it that day they wanted more time in between a space where they could check things out and research and so instead of having two um info and action items weeks apart or you know like two weeks apart um instead of that we'll just do the info on this meeting in the next meeting if it's okay with you that's why i'm throwing it out there we put it in the consent calendar and if there's any discussion we can pull it out of consent well isn't that isn't that the purpose of us getting our our board agenda on thursday for to read it and to look into it and not i thought that was the purpose of us getting it on thursday so we can do our research and read on it and ask questions and then come to the board and be ready to um vote on it the same day but that's my impression yeah no i understand your point um but basically you know they're just some like i didn't know the balance energy solutions we're going to have a presentation i've read up on it but what if i learned something so anyway um that's what was requested and i was just curious if everybody would be fine just having the info and then putting in the consent calendar and that way we don't double dip it well i think at this point i think i mean that's what we're i mean that's what we should do i i kind of agree with yolanda i'm not sure like for example i'm a little surprised to see number 10.5 as an info item because i requested an action item and you and arturo replied that it was going to be an action item so i'm a little surprised that this is an echo item well it was requested that it uh become an info item because there was more research and more information that people wanted i think you should agree upon that prior instead of right like right now i think i think that's been discussed prior so that we should have spoken about it so it is i mean so it is what it is but to your point jerry i mean okay fine i think i'm i'm okay with both of those coming on consent next time because we're getting into today but i would appreciate next time that if i ask something if i ask for an action item to be put on to be put on his action we can always as a board defer action if we don't want to but now we cannot take action because it's not listed as an action item right okay that sounds fine it's only because we're used to a certain process and then it just changes in the middle like right this minute that that's why i questioned it no i understand and i that's why i asked that's it to you all to discuss so again just for the clarity as we're moving forward um i'm not sure that i'm i'm i i'm hearing that obviously this is where we're at right now and this is the way it was done this time around but moving forward as resolutions come up um are we saying that they come info first and then action at a subsequent meeting uh because there are things there are things like for instance uh resolution for uh classified you know employee week uh you know there's there's and so i'm just trying to get clarity on you know moving forward what what are we reverting are we starting something like a new a new system a new process or are we reverting back well i'm not sure i got clarity on that uh as we're building board agendas and as as resolutions keep coming to our uh to our plate you know i think it works i mean both ways if if something's going to be an info item first and then later it's going to be you know if it's going to be separated i think that just the communication amongst the you know on the thursday packet um to let us know um because sometimes you might need to do more research on your part as a cabinet so i'm okay with doing info and then having two weeks to digest and for you to do the research and we have more questions and if you were to give us more information and then for us to go ahead and take action after that um but if if if we can do a hybrid i mean that that would be great too um so that way you know in case and leave that you know at the discretion of the president and the superintendent because you might as a superintendent you know or your cabinet might need some to do more research to be able to uh to give to the board so i i would just like just the communication i guess in the thursday packet um you know by the way this this is going to be an info item today and it's going to be an uh action item within two weeks that's it but i'm okay with that so i'll i'll just speak for myself um in my perspective i i don't see why um i don't necessarily see why something would need to be an info item and then two weeks later be an action item to yolanda's point you know if if we're getting those resolutions on a thursday and we have more than a few days to to review that um or or or answer any questions that to me seems uh sufficient there's certainly i mean almost inevitably will be times where there is more time needed or maybe we want to diffraction and we've done that in the past and i think that that it's already built into the system for us to be able to do that if we need it um so um yeah i i don't to your question arturo i don't i don't see why we would need to go about some new process i think the the traditional process that we have in place is most efficient it makes sense okay fantastic thank you can i can i just summarize that sure so again moving forward um we're gonna we're going to bring resolutions uh for action items and to the points that have been made by the board uh this evening there are mechanisms in places where those could be tabled um i mean there's mechanisms in place that if somebody needs more information that that that can happen and so we're gonna we're gonna bring resolutions now moving forward uh for action items is that correct yes that's what it says yes okay thank you okay now we'll move on to item 10.4 resolution 2021 08 k12 balance energy solutions and apparently there is someone to speak on that resolution [Applause] yes i'd like to introduce and welcome mr robert cruz who is the public affairs manager for socalgas and also a former board member at charter oak unified school district thank you for being here tonight sir hey good evening board and uh super superintendent ortega i appreciate the opportunity uh to speak on it on this issue and thank you for putting on the agenda um so now california basically as you know because of the pandemic is in a world of financial hurt k-12 districts have been impacted uh and we we're bringing this resolution forward because the state has been pushing for electrification there's a big movement up north to go all electric and if your own home is any indication especially when you run your ac all day because of the heat wave and we have blackouts you see the cost of of electricity and so this balanced energy resolution um i've brought it this is the fifth district that i've i've brought it to so i have four other districts that have adopted it uh they did adopt it as a as an action or on consent calendar so i i like the fact that you're gonna you know you're gonna hear me out you're gonna look at the resolution the language if there's questions you know you can pose them to uh to arturo ortega and he can ask me so i can provide additional information but my point is that as a former school board member and even even working with my you know city councils the one thing that we bristled at was when sacramento dropped unfunded mandates on us they would say do this but no dollars were attached to it uh this is similar this movement by the legislature that they have moved in in that direction l.a county tried to pass an ordinance last year l.a county where they they basically said no new restaurants can come in using natural gas so there's a big movement from the restaurant association restaurant owners business owners say we know you can't tell us what to do let us make our own choice if we decide to go win solar hydrogen electric a hybrid of all those a combination give us that choice as a local elected board or city council to make that determination um we think the bounce energy approach provides all those options to you in terms of doing your part to basically decrease the carbon footprint and we've seen the impact with the wildfires in california with the weather when it i just mentioned that when it gets hot our prices go up but if we have options and as a district when you're really struggling in some cases to manage your budgets and sacramento says you're getting less money because you know we're being hit business the revenues aren't coming in from business so i'm presenting this k-12 balance energy resolution for your consideration i hope that you can support it again it's based on cost to the district because if you're told you have to go all electric and you have to change out your equipment and your schools everything has to go electric now your your electric bills go up so that those dollars are being spent when you could basically decide we're going to use uh you know natural gas to do this we're going to use maybe solar energy to do this but you the choices are made at your local level um and then again cost of choice really are the two big big issues the other thing i wanted to mention uh before i open up the questions if you have any is that the city of azusa passed a balanced energy resolution as as a city the city council did last year uh and now this year i'm coming to to the local uh school districts that are they're under they're in my district to ask for your support on this so with that if there's any questions i'd be glad to answer them any questions oh board member ariana's you you mentioned something that um you said in legislation they're passing that all districts have to go through do electric is this something new that has been brought up to legislation well there was a bill a year and a half a year and a half ago a b 32 it did not pass because they made amendments to the bill but we hear that that that legislation is being reworked and will be coming back the feeling is it will impact not only school districts but business the business community if sacramento can mandate that you have to go all electric that's the threats kind of nothing has come out aboard marianas nothing concrete yet but we hear from our staff in sacramento that this this there's a lot of conversation around this we just want to be prepared for our our cities and our school districts to say let us make that choice at the local level thank you okay any other questions okay so now we'll move on to item um much appreciated and item 2.5 resolution 2021-9 schools and local communities fundings act and chilean i've been pounding for this for a long time so i totally agree with you on that so if anybody else would like to speak up on the the basis for the proposition 13 and all that other things right do you want me to speak to this because yes please because yes i made a request to put this on the agenda to consider supporting prop 15 um which which is the it's it would um it's the schools and communities first act and it would um raise additional local property tax revenues by creating what this what's called a split roll and so commercial properties would be taxed at their at their fair at their fair share i think over since prop 13 was passed in the late 70s and the share of property taxes that's generated by the state that comes from residential so so when when prop 13 was passed when you look at the share of property tax revenues um two-thirds came from commercial one-third came from residential now um 40 years later it's flipped so two-thirds of all property taxes generated come from residential houses and one-third come from commercial and a lot of that has to do with the fact that um when when when a corporation or owns property right it doesn't change hands like it does with houses and so those properties do not get reassessed so this this will just allow the state to assess commercial property um at current rates and make it a fair system there is a big carve out for for small businesses so they define small businesses as three million or under so a lot of our small business businesses not all obviously but a lot of small businesses will be protected um and so i'm just putting this forth because it will generate a significant amount of revenue for school district for schools and i think we are always talking about how we need more money for our schools and how we don't have enough um and so this is one step towards we trying to reach full and fair funding so i just wanted so obviously it's information we can't vote around tonight but i hope that when it comes back to us next meeting that that everyone that will be willing to support this resolution if i can just add a little bit to that i want to i do want to show appreciation to uh afe aea and csea that signed on to this resolution as well so they have been named uh in the resolution in support of of the schools and local communities funding act and i'd like to throw in the um when i first ran for school board i was contacted by the people who are backing started this whole thing and i thought it was such a great idea and i did not know that was what was going on as far as that and the flipping the upside down and now multi-million dollar uh companies like disney are not paying the same fair share of property tax as we are as homeowners and our children are being denied that income for their schools so that's why i'm on board um anybody else i just want to thank shilonin for bringing this forward because it is a good proposition and it will help our students thank you okay anybody else alrighty um so we'll go ahead and we'll move down to the consent calendar we've got way too much cuteness going on right there 11.1 all matters listed under the consent calendar are considered by the board to be routine and format following the last consent calendar agenda item there will be no discussion of these items prior to the time of to the time the board staff or public requests specific items to be discussed if discussion is requested by a board member that item will be removed from the consent calendar and will be considered separate the superintendent and staff recommend approval of all consent calendar agenda items do i have a motion on the floor make a motion to approve 11.2 through 11.8 accent calendar thank you do i have a second i would second and open for discussion to to pull out two items okay 11.4 and 11.7 four and eleven point seven okay so we would be voting on all but eleven point four or eleven point seven eleven point one eleven point two eleven point three eleven point five and eleven point six and eleven point eight um so we had the motion it's been seconded let's vote okay and it passes 5-0 now we'll move on to item 12.0 items pulled from the consent calendar and item 11.4 will become 12.1 and item 11.7 will become 12.2 um gabriella our board member arianis uh yes for 11.4 i had a question and mr howard taurus the medical billing um i just want how often do we use him um you know what aaron cramer can answer that one um this is he this this position is providing um medical authorization for our speech therapists to bill medi-cal for district reimbursement um so we do receive that medi-cal billing so in terms of the frequency um i'm not quite sure but aaron cramer um is that a question that you are there can you answer that one i'm not sure if i'm here am i here you're here okay good um so we do participate in medi-cal billing which means that our providers such as our psychologists our mental health therapists and our speech and language therapists bill medical for services that they provide to students that are medically based there is a requirement for speech and language therapists in order for them to bill they need a doctor or a medical professional to sign off on their billing meaning that their services are medically related dr taras works for many districts and selfas in southern california um signing off on the medically related billing for all of our speech therapists and so that's why it's actually a 15-minute charge for his hourly rate um he signs off yearly for a two-year contract it might be twice a year excuse me i think he he reviews twice a year okay and so we're just we're just renewing his contract for for him for this next for the 2020 2021 school year exactly that is correct okay that's it thank you can we also actually can we can also another point of clarification because it looks like there's a discrepancy between the actual agreement and the language unless i'm mistaken um so it's 25 cents an hour not to exceed 70 a year on the contract but it appears that on the uh i believe that 2.5 is um fifth like a quarter of an hour at 280.

great thank you good night you

i think you're right it's reversed you know what um mr girl i'm so sorry i did not catch that when we reviewed it you are 100 right it is 2 280 for a quarter hour but then it says not to exceed 70 per year which that's still accurate that is correct that is accurate okay okay and then we move to go ahead and vote don't we no let me go through them both right can aaron just clarify because what i mean she's what does it make sense how do you how does he charge that per hour but he only spent only 20 dollars for the entire school year so because there's a clerical error i do think we're going to need to come back with this and i do apologize for the clerical error but to clarify the content of the question his hourly rate to my understanding is 280 dollars per hour and he works and now i'm doing my math he works a quarter of an hour so 15 minutes so he he only charges us 70 per year even though his hourly rate is higher because i'm looking at the actual contract it 1.25 at 280 hours equals 70 dollars per year that's that's the clearance so he only works 15 minutes for us for the whole year correct 15 minutes for the whole year it is a paperwork he does so we probably spent more time talking about it than he does you know what we are fiscally responsible that is an important thing to okay so the way that i just figured it out the 280 dollars that he charges for per hour quarterly would be one-fourth of that so then it would equal 70 dollars and that's how you guys but the way that it's reflected on the it doesn't necessarily there was there was a clerical error so i will have to bring this back and i do apologize for that okay well we've already had a motion in a second so we're going to have to have it amended to being pulled off of the agenda so yeah and i will bring it back next time you're cabling it substitute motion move that we table this second point four okay so we're going to table 12.1 11 also known as 11.4 and we vote on tabling that okay everyone now we're moving on to item 12.2 formerly 11.7 approved contract with integrity pest control management inc rfp 2021 100 100 and ms ariana's yes my question for this is excuse me what is the cost monthly because it doesn't clarify that on on the contract and so i think it's really important that it clarifies that because it just has an amount and it it doesn't have is it monthly is it yearly is it quarterly is the calendar and so um first of all what is the cost and can we please put in there that you know what's the cycle monthly yearly currently is um 2030 per month and that covers the district-wide offices as well as child nutrition our nutrition services sorry i'm sorry can you repeat that sure two thousand thirty dollars so 2030 is the monthly amount monthly i i think it's really important um we don't have the the like i said that reflected on on the contract so i think it's important that it's reflected on the contract so that way um there's point of clarity okay okay would you like to just go ahead and pull it and have it rewritten and bring it back uh yes madam president i would like to go ahead and pull the table and bring it back can we have um i would like to go ahead and motion to pull and bring back to our next meeting to for the monthly cost to be reflected on the contract second okay uh motion by board memorial seconded by board member yolanda all in favor or not okay and it passes 5-0 and at this point we'll go down to 13.0 human resources 13.1 consider approval of consultant gun psychological services incorporated um i would assume that that is from mr ronquillo do we have it uh there's yeah do i have a motion on the floor for this a motion to approve okay do we have a second second okay motion by board member ariana seconded by board member sheila neen um any discussion yeah uh just one one quick question can can you elaborate on briefly what this is and then also the contract says that the way that this will be reported uh back to the board or the is through ieps but that's not that doesn't that doesn't really get clarity on the like the effectiveness of the consultant um so can you speak to that as well how do we know that the consultant is that the district is getting its money's worth like to bring back uh aaron cramer to talk about this one okay so um this consultant agreement is in response to a parent request for an individual education evaluation the selfa the special education local plant agency so east san gabriel valley selfa has a list of approved consultants that are considered qualified to conduct independent education evaluations so in this particular case a parent utilize their procedural rights and safeguards to ask for a psychological um because they had questions with our internal evaluation and so this is for one student and this is an approved um psychologist or company to conduct that assessment so you're saying the family picked this this this assessment the person correct yes yes that is correct so we give them a list of um of assessors that are approved now they families can still bring someone else that's not on that list um for us to consider however this one does happen this particular company does happen to be on that list and we've used them before okay thank you okay any more questions all right we'll go ahead and vote then okay it passes 5-0 and now we'll move on to item 13.2 approve the memorandum of understanding between the azusa unified school district and the azusa educators association cta and nea motion on the floor motion to move 13.2 okay motion by board member ariana's do i have a second second seconded by board member grier um any discussion yeah i have something so i one i want to say i appreciate that we've been able to collaborately collaboratively develop this mou i think you see some examples around the state where that's not happening and some places are start happens are about to start school and don't have something so i appreciate that this was done i mean we saw i think the teachers voted on it at least a week and a half for two weeks before school started so i appreciate that um i just want to ask a question in terms of at the very end of the mou it talks about synchronous instruction and it lays out minimal minimal daily minute or minute minimum minutes per block can you clarify how that fits into our instructional approach and and whether we expect to see that's what that's what we're going to see in classrooms or or how that how that is going to translate into into how much synchronous instruction students are going to get dr mitchell do you want to respond to this question oh yeah i think it's either this is directed to our dana sorry i'll start um so these would be they are um minimum it would be the floor of synchronous instruction and so sp 98 delineates that students will receive synchronous instruction live interactions with their teachers and or peers and so this can be done in a variety of ways and so these are again these are minimum floor expectations and really it really depends in terms of what kinds of you know instructional activities we're doing best case is obviously uh we have whole group instruction but especially with distance learning it really should be additional instruction uh synchronous instruction with uh small groups right so that is one of the um the best evidence-based practices in distance learning so we would expect to see a combination of whole and small group as well okay thank you any more discussion okay let's vote ass is 5-0 and now we'll move on to item 14.0 business and finance 14.1 approve agreement with aries software do i have a motion on the floor so i'm so moved hmm okay so it was uh moved by board member shiloh nin and seconded by board member greer okay do we have any discussion all right let's go ahead and vote on this okay it's past five zero and next is fourteen point two ratify and approve slash approve child care alliance of los angeles grant i have a motion on the floor make a motion to approve 14.2 motion by board member yolanda a second seconded by board member arianas any discussion yes i have an explanation on that please sure i'd be happy to so um the child care alliance has awarded our district with a fourteen thousand dollar grant that will provide our preschool teachers with professional learning instructional coaching and um other resources needed to improve our preschool programs and improve our rating so preschool programs receive a rating on what's called the quality rating and improvement system and so this is an opportunity for us to continue continue to improve our practice um and again professional learning um uh we can purchase additional resources um uh along with that as well and so um we're excited and it's uh fourteen thousand dollars all right thank you uh board member arianas do you have a question yes i just wanna um just congratulate our district in receiving this crap for fourteen thousand dollars is fourteen thousand dollars and i'm i'm really excited you know that that we're getting this grant it's an opportunity um our district applied and we received it so yay congratulations guys okay um and any other comments okay let's go ahead and vote passes 5-0 and does anybody have anything else before i close the meeting comments well i would like to thank you everybody and miss jamal appreciate you all right everybody drive carefully have a good night what time are we closing this meeting oh i'm sorry closing the meeting at 9 20.